


Sunday, Bloody Sunday

by apiphile, jar



Series: thursdayverse [6]
Category: Cobra Starship, Dresden Dolls, Fall Out Boy, Gym Class Heroes, My Chemical Romance, Rise Against, The Used
Genre: Character Death, Drug Use, F/M, Fights, Flashbacks, Gen, M/M, Mob AU, Multiple Pov, Torture, Violence, backstabbing, co-writing, hamlet ending, novel-length project, schemes, undercover policeman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-11
Updated: 2010-05-11
Packaged: 2017-10-09 09:55:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 39,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/85935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apiphile/pseuds/apiphile, https://archiveofourown.org/users/jar/pseuds/jar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thursdayverse Finale. Underlying tensions and untruths in the Way Empire begin to unravel the entire structure.</p><p>This will not make sense if you haven't read the preceeding fics: Thursday Kids Like To Cause, Died on a Wednesday, Saturday Night's All Right For Fighting (So Is Friday), Black Monday, and Tuesday in the Woods.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sunday, Bloody Sunday

**Author's Note:**

> Exemplary beta-ing thanks to channonyarrow. There is a coda and a series of fic-appendices you may also wish to read. Or not!

Dr. V inspects his smile in the en suite mirror. The mirror is flecked with either toothpaste or pus (he won't know which until he asks his partner what she's been doing in here), and his smile is not convincing. Too many accidents with too many drugs have left his facial muscles uncooperative and permanent facial tardive dyskinesia is the legacy of _one single solitary_ quackish misdiagnosis and its resultant medication. But Brian still tries, because people respond to smiles. It's in all the textbooks.

And he has so much to smile about, really; Brian washes his hands a third time, hot-and-cold. The anti-bacterial hand-wash is running low, staining the insides of the bottle lurid, hygienic pink. After all, he is doing what his parents had wanted all along. Mr. and Mrs. V's strange, scrawny little boy is a doctor.

All right, thanks to crippling student debts and … other debts … he is a _mob_ doctor and he hasn't exactly strictly _passed_, but if they were going to haul him out of drama school they couldn't exactly bitch and moan about the results.

His handset buzzes against his thigh. Brian taps his fingers on the rim of the basin for a second time before checking the screen: an SMS.  


> MEDIC. Hand laceration, 2nd conf. room.

  
Brian returns his phone to his pocket and practices his smile again. His lips stick on his gums and produce a rictus that mates terror with nausea and resembles nothing of comfort. He frowns at himself, unsticking his mouth as his cheeks twitch and flinch, running a finger along his gums.

"Briii-yan," Amanda's voice, lilting and persuasive, drifts under the door, making him start as effectively as her chin poking into her back. "You're going to have to get thiiiis one, I'm bu-usy."

Of course Toro would have sent the cry for medic to them both, in case of separation. Brian snatches up Gladstone bag from the toilet seat (it was dramatic, of course, but then what could anyone expect from a drama student?) and backs out of the strange little black-tiled room.

'Busy' today means sprawling on her back on one of the beds, her legs proper against the wall, painting stars onto her stockings in half-clotted silver nail polish. Brian does his best to level a frown at her, but his face is fickle and the rictus grin resurfaces instead. Amanda raises her absence of eyebrows at him, head hanging upside-down.

"It's just _stitches_," she yawns. "You can _do_ stitches on your own. Even their vets can do stitches."

"Why aren't their vets doing the stitches then?" Brian grumbles, putting his shoes on. There is a hole in the sole of one and it has absorbed the frothing mix of blood and disinfectant-laced tap water that all-too-recently flooded over one of the downstairs floors. Again.

"Don't forget to use a new needle," Amanda calls by way of a goodbye. It's indistinct; she's holding the top of a new nail polish bottle clamped in her wide white teeth.

And of course the reason they have to have a medic to do a vet's job now is that the paw currently wrapped tight in a dirty, blood-soaked sports sock is that belonging to vet and torturer boy: the one with the glasses and the studentish buttons on his lapels. He sits on the conference room table with his grimy vegan sneakers resting on a plush chair, peering blankly at his hand, and four other faces turn to give Brian the benefit of their beady stares as he pushes the door open.

"Hello." It is not a questioning inflection because Brian hates the way his voice sounds when he does it. Squeaky.

Toro nods his response, hands behind back like a minister or a politician. Face a smooth mask of polite redirection. _Stare at someone else, Dr. Viglione_.

The others are short. Most criminals, Brian has found, are short. Two of these short thugs have shaved their heads. Two – a different combination but not a different pair, wholly – wear glasses. Three are heavily tattooed (he is not good at the names of _people_, just locations, conditions, and methods); Brian has always found tattoos rather silly, and all the more so on men (and women) for whom dermal perforation is a daily risk, and a high risk at that. And they do not _wash_, these people – especially the very smelly ones with the creepy dead eyes and apparent allergy to shaving as well as soap, the ones by the fire escape – driving up their likelihood of infection, shortening these already disproportionately short lives. Brian's job here consists of trying to turn back the sea by himself, with the potential patients doing their best to make things worse for themselves.

"Give me your-" Brian resists the urge to say 'paw' to the boy on the table; those delicate features conceal a mind unopposed to torturing captives. He's seen the tapes: Way, the less insane one (although that is a distinction currently open for reinterpretation for a number of reasons), the one that isn't dead, had shown the tapes to them when they first arrived. A threat. Traitors are introduced to … whatever his name is … "-hand, please."

'Please', Brian finds, is an acceptable substitute for a name, and it makes him sound professional. When your face twitches like a bag of angry ferrets all the time, a professional manner is an invaluable aid in convincing patients to trust you.

The boy – anyone younger than Brian is automatically a child – extends his arm cautiously. Brian gloves up and unwraps the sports sock with an audible tut, already mentally reaching for his tweezers and iodine to remove the dirty fibres. Don't these thugs have any bandages of their own? A first-aid kit?

The sock sticks in the wound, Brian pulls, and the boy winces and hisses.

That's the other thing. He doesn't at all approve of them trying to use medical terminology when they know not of what they speak, lumping all skin-breaking wounds together as "lacerations" and all non-breaking wounds as "contusions" like the TV-educated murderers and thieves they are. No one ever mentions elements of crushing or potential bone-damage and it keeps throwing him for a loop.

This is, however, very obviously a knife wound, and judging by how wound up the dangerous types here had become even before Way's retreat to the Penthouse of Crazy it would be no surprise to learn it has been inflicted in a fight of some sort.

Brian is no forensic specialist, but it's easy to surmise an automatic grab for the blade of a knife flashing at the boy's face, or perhaps at someone else. The rest of him is intact, so a successful grab—

"What the fuck are you smirking about?" the one with the absurd, vain haircut snarls.

"Muscular paralysis," Brian says, opening the Gladstone bag to the comforting reek of sterile packing and plastic vials.

"_What_?"

"I have partial muscular paralysis in my _zygomatic_ major and minor muscles. The muscles around my mouth." Brian examines the wound for grime. There is rather a lot, and the pained, short breaths of this patient will doubtless aggravate him as he tries to clean it. "My 'smirking' is not voluntary."

Which shuts them up for a while.

There is, however, bad news on the horizon. The wound is shallow enough at the top of the knife stroke, but the lower end has severely severed the _Abductor minimi digiti_ and surrounding muscles, and the _flexor digitorum profundis_ and _superficialis_ tendons serving the smallest two fingers are in tatters, the little finger's phalanges visible amongst the contaminated blood and sock fibres.

"This will need more than sutures," he says, more to himself than his audience or his patient.

"Does that mean what I think it means?" asks the boy, with an admirably steady voice – only a slight fluttering gives away his internal distress.

"I'm not a mind reader." This is very irritating. Life would be a lot easier if he were, although, he suspects of the situation here, a lot more disturbing, psychologically. "It _means_ I will need to amputate these two fingers," Brian indicates by pointing but at this stage he is careful not to touch them. The boy-patient is already in pain and increasing it – while admittedly funny (Amanda would, were she here, make him say it in front of everyone, that it's funny) – will result in vocalisation and probable assault by the rest of the gang.

"_Amputate_?" squawks the one with the stupid hair. The boy whose digits are under discussion says nothing, but his face becomes even whiter.

"There is too much tendon and nerve damage for them to be useable again," Brian addresses himself to the boy as he extracts from his bag: disinfectant. Swabs. Dressings. Thread. Needle. Scalpel. The tool for cutting bone that has a name he cannot persuade his mind to retain. "You must decide whether it's more convenient to have two … dead … fingers in your way, or to lose them altogether."

The boy shifts his weight, his thin buttocks, on the table as Brian removes a sterile swab from its packaging. The room is silent but for the ragged respiration of anticipation. While he waits for an answer, Brian dampens the swab with disinfectant and takes the boy's hand very lightly in his own be-gloved palm. There is a flinch in spite of this tenderness of touch; automatic, and not insulting.

Brian begins the tiresome business of carefully coaxing crap from the upper, less damaging end of the wound.

"What about the other fingers?" the boy asks, a lump plain in his throat; Brian suspects he is stalling, trying to keep his mind off the likelihood of losing his pinky and ring finger.

"Can you move them?" Brian knows that the first two digits (_sinister_, and it does not appear to be his dominant hand) will not need to be sacrificed, but he plays along with the boy's anxiety and desire for control. Gives him something else to dwell on.

The fingers flex, and the lumbrical muscles contract, bulge, and expel blood and some of the contamination from the wound that lances above them, just skimming the metacarpophalangeal joints without quite getting into them. This is how Brian knows those will be okay. "They're okay," the boy confirms quietly.

Toro says, "You must learn to keep your tempers in check, with _external_ enemies breaking into the hotel so regularly we can't afford to have anyone out of commission."

The accumulated sock grime in the wound cleans out easily enough from the superficial laceration. Brian replaces the swab several times in the process.

"TELL THAT TO FUCKING SAPORTA," snaps the voice Brian recognises as the one belonging to the stupid-haired boy. It is deep enough to differentiate it from the others. Hat Boy does not speak. "He's taking swings at my fucking people on no provocation, Ray!"

"I find that hard to believe," Toro murmurs. Brian is inclined to agree.

"Have you _met_ Gabe?"

The wound is exceptionally deep at the leading edge, the point of worst impact, across the _Abductor minimi digiti_: as Brian gingerly cleans away blood he sees glimpses of bone, of the near metacarpals. Small veins have been severed. It will be difficult to clean without the boy losing more blood, hard to suture properly, and prone to infection. Especially if this torturer is as dirty and incautious as his fellows.

"Hold your hand up higher – above the line of your elbow," Brian says. He sees his own unwise, involuntary jumpy smile reflected briefly in the blood-flecked glasses the boy wears. Perhaps the blood is his own. Perhaps it is someone else's. Brian doesn't like to speculate too long about this, it unsettles his stomach. "It will lessen the bleeding."

"We don't need you, not as much as you need us right now. What's to stop us just fucking walking out on you, right fucking now?" Stupid-haired boy is agitated.

"Sense, I would hope." Toro's voice is high and soft and calm, like distant clouds. "The building is under effective siege—"

Finally someone admits what everyone knows.

"—and you would be shot almost immediately. Add to this your demonstration of disloyalty to both the Way and Toro families and your stock plummets once more – gentlemen, a man's livelihood is his honour and his honour his livelihood in this business. You would be reduced to knocking over fast food stands for pennies and twenty dollar prize fights run by far less prestigious institutions than this. And retribution _would_ follow." Toro pauses.

He's eloquent, soft-spoken as ever, his fluffy ponytail sticks in the mind, so unusual when paired with the very expensive suit (Brian's is a hand-me-down from his uncle, a mortician in Florida, and the sleeves are too short). Toro is not menacing like the others, like a car crash, but like a death sentence, like cancer. He is inescapable, slow, certain death.

"And naturally, if you leave now you will be denied your fee," Toro finishes, as Brian tries to thread the slightly curved needle.

"That works better if you lick the thread," says one of the boys, the youngest, too close behind Brian's shoulder. He sounds like he wants to be helpful; he smells like he bathes by calendar appointment and shampoos with cannabis.

"So does infection," Brian says shortly. The needle threads. He takes the boy's hand in a slightly tighter grip and nods a few times. "This may take a while," he explains, "the stitches have to be very small or you'll have a huge scar and won't be able to clench your fist properly."

Which of course the average thug criminal values quite highly as a manual skill.

He concentrates on the stitches, and not the bitter wrangling between Toro and Stupid Hair or the heavy, smoky breathing of the boy behind him, the scrutiny of his handiwork. Still, compared to Dr Cohen's supervision, the threat of a bullet in the spine holds surprisingly little fear.

"Take them off," he says suddenly, the boy Brian is sewing up from the top downwards.

He doesn't react yet, just keeps sewing, his ocular muscles spasming in unhelpful and badly-timed waves.

"Are you _sure_?" breathes the one behind Brian. There are two behind him now – Hat Boy is there almost against his spine and that worries him immediately. The one with the hat moves fast and says little but he exudes an unpleasant air of suppressed anger.

"They'll only get in the way," Brian assures him, still sewing. He wants very much for these two noisy breathers with their tempers and their pot smell to take their tiny little selves further away and stop distracting him.

"Are _you_ sure you can't save them?" asks an unfamiliar voice that the process of elimination tells him is Hat Boy. He has a surprisingly rich voice for such a nondescript form.

Brian stops sewing and snaps in mounting irritation, "His tendons are in tatters. His fourth bipennate lumbrical muscle is scored and his _Abductor minimi digiti_ is, to put it in layman's terms, _irredeemably fucking fucked_. Your friend is lucky he gets to keep his _other_ fingers."

"Patrick," says the patient, "just let him do it." He sounds resigned. Brian can smell the fear-sweat on him as he resumes sewing. He shouldn't have mentioned the amputation until _after_ the sutures but bedside manner has never been his strong point; Brian sews, the boy flinches, the room falls silent again.

"No drugs while this is healing," he warns abstractedly, on autopilot, as he ties off.

The boy snorts at him. "I'm straightedge."

Brian has no idea what this is supposed to mean. He picks up the scalpel and watches recognition flare outwards in the boy's eyes like blood dropped into a glass of water. He knows, probably exactly, how much this will hurt, and it is obvious he is steeling himself.

Brian extends the boy's pinky finger, straight as possible; he guesses from the change in breathing and shift of weight that his patient has bitten hard on his lip to contain a pained noise. He puts the tip of his scalpel into the secondary wounding. There is another flinch, and as far as he can he pries it between the metacarpophalange and the metacarpal, severing everything that still attaches useless digit to hand.

The boy's body jerks and there is a _mmph!_ of extreme discomfort. His skin begins to sweat, the sweat of pain and distress.

Brian recalls his training and says, "It'll be over soon," but instead of soothing it sounds jerky and high, a clown's voice. No one says anything.

He extends the second finger cautiously. The skin is slippery with sweat and blood drips from the boy's stump onto his trouser leg, forming scallops, roses. There is another flinch and Brian can feel the answering leaps and tics in his face.

The cut is faster this time, the joint easier to find, and Brian feels he has barely pulled a breath before the second finger lands like discarded garbage on the carpet, a short sharp shower of blood its bridesmaids on the way down.

All that is left now is to cauterise the stumps.

* * *

Amanda is on the phone when he returns, itching to scrub blood from the parts of him that his gloves could not cover, Gladstone bag hanging loosely from his index finger. She shakes her head for silence as soon as the door is open.

Contrary to what the murderers also shacked up in this hotel clearly believe, Amanda is not Brian's lover and nor is she his sister and she certainly isn't _both_, as he has heard the frog-eyed one suggest. They are just two similar people in a similar situation; if they have a connection it is only that they've got a little moral superiority on their neighbours and a lot of money owing.

He stumbles into the bathroom and washes, and washes, and washes until there is no more anti-bacterial hand-wash left, watching his smile shrink and grow like a pulsar as Amanda's conversation with Ryan winds on and on.

They are playing a very dangerous game here. More accurately, Amanda is playing a very dangerous game and Brian is hanging on to the side and hoping he doesn't get hit by the ricochets. Under other circumstances those ricochets might have been metaphorical, but not here. Everyone is armed and Brian thinks he's beginning to develop X-ray vision; every lump and bulge in someone's clothing is a gun, or a knife, or a knuckle-duster.

Brian watches a slideshow of unreal emotions flicker over his face like the ghosts of feelings he's never experienced and as the word _bye_ slinks under the en-suite door he twirls on his heel and plucks the barrier between them away again; "Am-an-da…"

"Briii-yan," she counters, tossing her phone into the air and catching it. "Do you know how much money you can earn opening one door?"

"Fifty dollars?"

"Nope."

"A hundred dollars."

"Nope."

"Twelve Euros and thirty cents?"

"Only in Rotterdam. Do you want me to tell you how much money opening one door is going to earn us, Brian?"

Brian scratches the back of his head. They both know he wants to know, but they also both know that Amanda likes games and Brian can't refuse her any more than he can make his face lie still.

"Oh Amand_da_-Aman_dar_-Panda, how much money can one earn by opening one single solitary little tiny door?" he asks obediently and in a sing-song voice.

"Thirty thousand dollars," she says, like the beautiful curse they know money to be.

"Thirteen thousand?" He heard her fine, but he knows she wants this, this elaborate dance of words, and there's no point denying it to her.

"Thir. Tea." She enunciates each syllable perfectly, cut-glass and Bostonian, her eyebrowless brow arched like a railway bridge. "Thiiiiiiir-tea thou-sand doll-ars."

"Good golly Ms. Palmer," Brian says, holding his hands to the sides of his face like Macaulay Culkin in some awful eighties film, "that's a lot of money for opening a door."

"Mmm hmm," Amanda frames his twitching face with two Ls made of fingers, and squints at him through the 'lens'. "Letting folk die; more profitable than saving their lives. Our business correspondent, Not Yet A Doctor Viglione, reports—"

Thirty thousand dollars for opening a door. And for the reports Amanda has been giving, of course, but in the end, enough money to buy a ticket to Cuba and get his medical degree without the weight of debts like millstones crushing his future out of him. For opening a door. Thirty thousand dollars.

Brian's eyebrows knit and unknit; he won't think what opening one door means for the man, the men in the penthouse suite (BertandGee, it has become one word) or Toro and his fluffy ponytail. After the things he has seen in this hotel it's hard bordering on impossible to feel much sympathy for these men. The things they do, have already done, outweigh what will probably happen to them.

"Thirty thousand dollars'll get you--?" Amanda chants, picking up a loose pot of liquid eyeliner from the spray of cosmetics on her bedside table, lunging for a mirror.

"Cuuuuubaaaaa," Brian drawls, willing his mouth sloppy. It almost works.

"Socialism and cigars, rum and medicine and girls," Amanda keeps the beat as she brushes black onto the place where her eyebrows should be.

"Et tu, mademoiselle Palmer?" Brian passes his hands over his face as if by some magic of concealment he can trick his features into stillness of when they emerge. "Que 30.000$ t'obtiendront-ils?"

"Paris. École d'arts," Amanda finishes her brushmanship with a flourish. "And _fuck_ medicine."

"But _you_ passed the boards."

"I said, fuck medicine," Amanda turns and waggles her brows at him like Groucho Marx. To the layman the replacement eyebrows are just abstract squiggles, but to one who can decipher her doctorly scrawl they say quite plainly: 'trust me trust me'. Brian hoots with laughter.

He's going to miss her.

* * *

The penthouse is unhygienic and rancid with human sweat and Brian does not care for it at all. The posters of unheard-of bands are curling and peeling, there are things, fungal things beginning to grow in the corners – he can smell mildew even if he cannot see it – and he's quite certain there is faecal matter wedged under the infected, infested fingernails of the smaller of the two men who currently reside here.

Toro stands between Brian, Amanda, and the door, as silent and still as an Easter Island statue and about as aesthetically pleasing. Before them, curled up on the bed like a macro, human interpretation of the double-helix, a pair of black-haired, dishevelled men in unwashed clothing looking gaunt and unhealthy. One of them is plainly chemically altering the colour of his hair – his eyes are Scandinavian blue – and the other is of more Mediterranean stock. _Way_, Brian reminds himself.

They may or may not be lovers – it is none of Brian's business or indeed interest – but they are affixed to each other as intimately as tendon to bone. What matters is that they have been called up here not to examine a patient, as far as Brian can see, but to give account of themselves.

"Irrecoverably … damaged," Way says, choking on the words. It is evident he is in some distress and Brian wonders if he should suggest something to alleviate this. Emotional trauma can badly affect logical decision-making and he's sure that in such an involved business … Brian gently derails his own train of thought and reminds himself of the thirty thousand dollars. A distraught and illogical Way will make things easier for his temporary employer.

"A perforated intestine is not really something I could have done a lot to save him from," Amanda says in her _I'm sorry, we just had to euthanize your grandmother, and now you owe us ten thousand dollars_ voice. "Maybe if he'd been under my care immediately after shooting he'd have been alive and crippled, or alive-ish and in a coma, but gut wounds are notoriously tricky things. Mr Way."

Brian watches the blue-eyed, small-boned man beside Way as he watches Amanda unblinkingly. There is something compellingly _off_ about the man's face, but it isn't a matter of features – Brian feels that an artist or someone with an interest in male facial physiognomy might even classify him as handsome or well-proportioned – so much as a matter of intensity and rigidity of muscles of expression. A defect Brian is most familiar with.

"Immediately?" Way leaps on the word with a spasm of the throat, his fingers entwined in his own hair and between the unspeakably dirty fingers of the abnormally small man sitting beside him. "How immediately?"

"Immediately, immediately, as in the dictionary definition of immediately," Amanda says with considerable restraint; Brian can see the sarcasm pawing like an impatient horse at the back of her teeth. It wants to be let out; Amanda wants to make fun of this grieving man for his desperate hopes. Brian remembers then that there are a number of reasons why he and Amanda are not lovers, and one of them is that she is a _fucking bitch_. "Directly as soon as he was shot."

"He _was_," interrupts the short man with the doll-blue eyes.

"I beg your fucking pardon," Amanda says sharply, "but he _wasn't_, not by the amount of blood he'd lost and the state of his gut." She looks like she'd quite like to climb over the discarded clothing and give him a slap, the way she tends to with people who dispute her medical judgement.

"Bert," Way murmurs. In a louder voice he says, "How long was it between him being shot and you getting to him?" His throat is clearly creaking at the enormity of having to remain calm.

"Too long," Amanda says slowly, giving Way the full benefit of her stare and her hypnotic eyebrows, (trust me, trust me), "for me to do anything to save him."

"I see," Way says, his voice cracking again. People frequently say "I see" to Dr Amanda Palmer and in Brian's experience they usually say it when they do not, in fact, see at all, but know that they don't have the knowledge to argue with her or the confidence of their position.

Behind them Toro clears his throat and Brian considers responding to this social gesture with a medical suggestion, deliberately pretending to care more for the health of the mob than anyone could reasonably be expected to; it is the kind of remark that Toro of them all would see for what it truly is, and Brian thinks maybe he is in _enough_ trouble with the thugs and murderers already.

"Thank you," Way says, nodding at the door for them to leave. "Would you –" this remark is clearly addressed to Toro, not to the departing doctors, but Brian listens anyway in case it is helpful, "— find Hurley for me, please?"

The room stinks of loss, and rather more prosaically of unwashed people, unwashed clothes, unwashed hair, and something that may or may not be dried-in semen. Brian bites his tongue and follows Amanda out of the door, between the two guardians who stand at the top of the building like gargoyles, watching for assassins and intruders.

"Really?" he asks her when she gets into the elevator, and the door slides shut with a gentle _bing_. He keeps expecting something more gothic, in keeping with the overblown décor.

"Really," Amanda says, slumping against a wall. She smirks up at him with her (trust me, trust me) eyebrows raised and says with an expression of mock-innocent contrition, _oopsy_, like a child that has dropped something, "Oh, and I was, I admit, not trying very hard."

* * *

The next flesh case they are called upon to save proves unsaveable. Amanda and Brian struggle gamely 'gainst a sea of blood-flooded organs but they are compartments of the Titanic: sinking fast, freezing quickly, and too late, too late. The intruder has not been caught by a guard dog but by as good as: pot-and-sweat scented midget boys with greasy hair, one so heavily tattooed that he looks like he is gift-wrapped for Christmas in this sweltering July heat, the other reeks of chemicals, burn scars old and sharp on his skin, and looks so psychotic Brian thinks having him put down would be safest for everyone. He has fires, this man, fires in his blood.

Between them these crazy sons of bitches have all but torn the intruder in two, laterally. A slice almost as neat as an autopsy incision from sternum to groin, his guts a tangle about his thighs; the stench of excrement not excreted was their first indicator that this was a lost cause. He has perforated bowels and a melee of punctures to the face, a crushing force behind each blow; one has torn his eye socket like a wet paper bag, the root of the optical nerve is the only recognisable feature in the mess.

Brian thinks perhaps this man was grateful to die, by the end. And he wishes he could not picture the kind of minds that can inflict such horror. He very much wishes that the minds in question are not across the kitchen table from him as he discards filthied gloves into the bucket and puts on a new pair.

"Toro wants him alive for questioning," says the blond, the beardy Viking one with the economical word use. His voice is uncertain; Brian supposes that men who mete out death on a professional basis must have a good understanding of what a human body can and cannot recover from.

Amanda gloves up a second time and sings, "You can't always get what you waaant--"

"Yeah, good luck with that," agrees gift-wrapped smelly tattoo boy.

It's already too late. Brian checks his watch, which has stopped. "Time?"

The blond roots around in his pocket for his cell. "8.15."

"Time of death would probably be about 8.16 then," Amanda confirms. "Tell Toro to want harder next time. Or to ..." She doesn't finish her sentence but the 'use guards who aren't psychotic' hangs there like tear gas over a riot.

Brian's face twitches in time with the really, _really_ crazy one's bicep. He has no Vix for his filtrum and the smell of excrement is making him somewhat nauseous.

"Well," says Amanda, pulling off her gloves, "over to you, Chemical Guy."

The psycho with the burns gives her a look that could fry metal.

"That _is_ your job, right?" She smiles and bats her eyelashes. He doesn't exactly look like that would ever work on him.

Brian ducks out of the kitchens before anything can happen to him, his rictus beginning to ache. He takes a few breaths to clear his head and his cilia and macroscopic nasal hair; the sudden appearance of a new player almost makes him psychically jump.

He can't remember her name and it's almost embarrassing. There are only two women in the Ways' hotel who aren't domestic staff and one of them is Amanda and he _still_ can't remember the other's name.

She's very pretty.

She's also looking at him. It's quite a direct look, an intent one. She crosses to stand in his personal space, moving like a snake in a garter belt, black opaque stockings and thick dark hair.

She raises her hand to his face like he's a strange dog and she's giving him her hand to sniff to check she's friend, not foe: maintaining eye contact the whole time, smiling a smile with depths. "Sniff," she says, removing any lingering doubt he may have had about her intentions.

Brian inhales obediently and knows his pupils dilate almost instantly. He has memorised whole anatomical textbooks and chemical components of the human body. He even sat in on a neurobiology lecture without getting too lost, but this scent always makes him dumb. He loses all his medical vocabulary and finnesse and can only acknowledge in an organ that is not his brain and speaks a far cruder tongue that her finger smells of pussy. And she clearly knows that.

She lowers her hand.

"I'm sorry," Brian says on some sort of serene auto-pilot, "I don't know your name."

"I'm Vicky-T," she says, turning away. She beckons behind her with the same finger she gave him to sniff and he follows like he's on a leash. "Not Vicky, not Vic, not Victoria. Vicky-T."

And that's all she says, leading him through the ventricles of the building with only the swish and sweep of her hips (clad in some black stretch denim dress) and the ghost of a smell as personal as sweat.

Vicky-T. Vicky-T. Vicky-T. He chants it in his head, twisting the sound around the smell; this is Vicky-T's pussy. This is Vicky-T's cunt. This is what it smells like. Perhaps he will remember it this way, her name. Her pussy.

Vicky-T. She looks like the kind of woman who gets what she wants. The kind of woman Brian likes to be got by. Tardive dyskinesia and accompanying sporadic Zygomatic part-paralysis aside, he is a handsome man. Brian knows this; it is not vanity, mere biological and geometric certainty. Women who like their men disposable have commented on his beauty before the inevitable disposal and it works for him. It works well for him.

Vicky-T. She stops ahead of him in the corridor and half-turns, her hand slipping over her hip. Her dress hitched up at the front, where he can't see; with a jolt that runs from his balls to his brain Brian realises what she has just done, in this public but deserted place. An animal response builds at the base of his spine as she beckons him on again, her finger glistening.

Perhaps she will sit on his face, Brian thinks with dreamy and detached anticipation, and squeeze his skull with her thighs. Perhaps she will just lie back and let him thrust his face in to the source of that giddying smell, drink her in, drink her wet and drink her dry again.

The hotel room number is low - she is on the second floor. Brian knows his cheeks must be flushed, they are burning; this is vasodilation, he reminds himself. Sex makes him stupid and he does not want to, does not want to forget.

There are individual stockings and women's underwear on the floor. Brian is used to this, he has roomed with Amanda for long enough to be unperturbed by treading on crusty gussets, though his hands always ache to wash afterwards.

Vicky-T smirks him into the room and he slams the door; she's kneeling on the bed with her shoeless feet angled in a wide V and the material that stretches over her pubis is the centre of Brian's sweaty harsh-breathed universe.

"What are you waiting for, a permission slip from Mommy?" It is half-sneer and half-grin. Brian is on the bed in a gangling long-legged instant, kneeling, his hands on his thighs because he has no idea where else to put them.

Vicky-T raises her hand, _that_ hand, and runs her finger slowly over his closed lips. The smell is intense, right under his nostrils, the heady and unmistakeable perfume of sex; Brian opens his mouth, his tongue rising like an erect penis - a hard cock - engorged phallus, and takes the digit into the bed of his remaining saliva--

Vicky-T pulls her hand away and smiles, purposeful and predatory and perverse. "I didn't say you could do that."

The words slap his face and tug on his cock like hands, stroking it hard; Brian breathes through his nose like a horse.

"What do you want me to do?" he murmurs, and those words grip his balls too.

"Undress," she says, with quiet authority that is strangely not undermined by the edge of a giggle in her voice.

Brian doesn't need to be told twice. He fumbles his shirt buttons, struggles with them. Looking up to reassure this woman that he's going as fast as he can, that he will be naked soon, he catches her smile like something that lurks in cold shadows, and only then thinks to feel afraid.

It feels like a punch at first.

His chest has sprouted a knife handle, slipping from her grasp like flowers from an unwanted suitor. It has entered between the fourth and fifth _vertebro-sternal_ ribs. It has severed, he thinks, the fourth intercostal muscle. It is, dirty unsanitised simple blade, in his lung. An intruder. A sharp-edged foreign object slicing through the alveolae, his, his, his ...

All the words have gone. There is only red: red in his lungs (liquid and hot and rising, rising as his mouth flaps like a fish for air that he can't process), red in his mind, red on his shirt, and red at the corners of his vision (he had always thought it would be blue-black, but now the time comes it is red, dark red).

There will be no thirty thousand dollars. There will be no Cuba. That all ends here; everything ends here.

Brian ends here.

\---

 

The curious affecting factor that stems from being more or less born wearing a suit is that it does somewhat confer upon one a sense of authority that many will not even think to question. Even if nature has _also_ blessed one with a jewfro of such incredible magnitude and tenacity that it takes two hundred dollars a month to tame it into a ponytail, a fluffy explosion behind one's head instead of haloing it. Ray Toro is no stranger to visual irony.

Another thing he is no stranger to at the moment is frustration. "Gerard," he says though the flapping shred of his patience, "the longer you stay in here the harder it becomes for us to retain a sense of your leadership, and consequently to achieve any _loyalty_ from your … foot-soldiers."

Gerard Way, heir – now the sole heir – to a criminal empire of similar size to and currently allied with the Toro Family's, stares at him glassily from a dishevelled black bed and runs his fingers through his hair in slow, jerky movements. He looks like a stop-motion animation of his former self, dark hollows under his eyes and exaggeratedly appalling body odour. Ray tries not to inhale.

The elder Way sibling has taken his brother's death about as well as Ray would have predicted: extremely badly. Even from his first visits to the Way family, before Donna's death, Ray had been struck by and slightly at the closeness of the two strange boys. And now that is severed, and Gerard – always the more obviously sensitive of the two – is alone.

What Ray had not accounted for was the persistent presence of the parasite McCracken. Ray does not, as a rule, harbour prejudices. They are inconvenient and unprofessional, two of the harshest swearwords in his father's vocabulary. _Never let a man's clothes, skin, or speech fool you into thinking he's harmless, simple, or not worth the hassle_, Senior had always said. But Bert McCracken gets under his skin, and has obviously crawled under Gerard's as effectively as a tick, or a tattoo.

He's curled around Gerard possessively, an arm over his back, mouthing words into one ear while glittering black eyes pick at Ray like crow beaks. Gerard flashes the briefest of smiles at something Bert says, and it's not a healthy smile at all.

"It's not time yet," Gerard says sadly, "I don't know when it will be."

"Gerard," Ray says slowly, tasting out different words for tact and semantic value, "your safety is important and inextricably linked to the successful management of some disparate groups of _dangerous individuals_ here. This requires at least an appearance of command from your quarter, if not your express interaction with their leaders – Gerard, appearances are _vital_, even here." He does not add that the elder Way is currently giving the appearance of a mad marionette, a Tim Burton puppet controlled at least in part by the dirty, scabbed fingers of the parasite McCracken.

The penthouse smells less than attractive. Ray has visited it in more fragrant states prior to Mikey's untimely demise, when at the very least joss sticks and the like could be relied upon to mask any unwashed clothing piles.

He would hesitate to hang this _all_ on McCracken, though the truth is that the particular subset of criminal subculture from which he hails do not perhaps value hygiene as highly as those who are required to interact regularly with politicians and police chiefs. Ordinarily he might have no issue with this; everyone after all has his place in the world.

But the smell is a symptom of underlying rot, mental rot, and Ray is displeased.

"If I have to _lie_ to them, how can I ask them to trust me?" Gerard asks almost plaintively, after a long pause. He sounds like he's speaking with his mouth full or his head injured, and to the part of Ray that's known Gerard Way since before either of them could walk this is a little distressing.

Ray sighs and straightens a crease in his jacket sleeve. He shouldn't be doing that in front of someone alien to the inner circle, it gives the impression of unease, and he _is_ uneasy. Ray leaves his sleeve alone.

"Everyone needs reassurance," he says, knowing that this information would go over better in Gerard's current state if he were to hug him at the same time, but also aware of McCracken's proximity like an invisible crowd barrier, a glass wall slammed down between them. He is convinced that this is deliberate. "Quite often they prefer it to honesty."

He has to try harder than he would have predicted to keep from shooting a significant glance at the parasite. McCracken being here smothers the conversation in code which Ray isn't sure Gerard is capable of cracking at the moment, reduces his informative and supportive chat to smoke signals.

"They are all operating on their own agendas the way they always have been," Ray continues, trying to sound light, "and it is our job, _your job_, Gerard, to see to it that they feel their agendas coincide with the structural needs of the Way and Toro Families." Ray steals a brief look at Gerard's unwelcome addition to his rooms and adds as obviously as he can while remaining appropriately circumspect and courteous, "I'm sure I don't need to spell out the consequences of failure to achieve this … balancing act."

"I'm not sure what it is you think I have left to lose," Gerard snaps, a sudden red flare of grief lighting the pallor of his too-wan cheeks, an imitation of Ray's manner that is insulting in its parody lighting his voice. A second later Ray thinks, _I should have been watching McCracken's reaction, not his_, and files the misdirection for future reference.

Ray's about to point out that Gerard has life, liberty, and the means of living to lose, and that he _will_ lose them, taking a few people with him, if he isn't careful – when his cell rings.

COBRA, says the screen.

"Good afternoon," Ray says, turning from the penthouse's inhabitants in a mockery of privacy, the same gesture used by bankers and lawyers the world over, pressing his fingertip to his opposite ear, "to what do I owe the pleasure?"

"The doctor is gift-wrapped and awaiting your attention in Conference Two," says a faux-British accent that could not possibly fool anyone who has actually visited the country from which it purports to hail. There are a lot of issues that require Ray's attention, so many that sleep is proving a luxury that even he, a virtual millionaire, can no longer afford. He refrains from scrubbing at his eyes with his hands, conscious of McCracken's beady eyes on him.

"Please make yourselves comfortable," he tells Blackinton's fake accent, "I will be present shortly." Closing the cell with a brisk snap, he points it at Gerard like a conductor's baton. "Once again I am herding cats," he says, trying to remain courteous again and nearly failing, "and once again the efficacy of this gesture would be greatly improved if you would _leave_ your … apartments … and be seen to take an interest in your own affairs."

He can hear in his own voice undertones of both nagging and pleading, and a faint patina of irritation. None of these will do; none of them will help the situation or reverse Gerard's decisions at this stage. Ray pulls himself together sharply.

"It's not his _fault_," McCracken says, one arm locked around Gerard's waist like a toddler's harness – restraint, not support. Ray gives the parasite a cool look and thinks with a vehemence that surprises him, _you manipulative little shit_.

But he says nothing of the sort aloud, pocketing his cell phone and closing one hand around the other like he's leading prayer in some Christian church; "Whether or not he is to blame for the beginning of this … slump," Ray says delicately, addressing McCracken but keeping his eyes trained like gun sights on Gerard's unfocussed stare, "this behaviour is undoubtedly exacerbating it."

Although there is no doubt that the unwashed hanger-on will have understood even if he isn't giving any indication of it, Ray feels compelled to shift register in the name of clarity, and pedantry, and ends in the same tone of polite restraint, "It _is_ his _fucking_ fault."

He cannot think of a better note on which to leave, and so leave he does.

Ray Toro does not slam doors, storm out, or leave in a huff. He has never behaved so petulantly, even as a teenager, because it has never proven conducive to acquiring a hospitable and therefore cooperative response from anyone. It also smacks of emotional weakness, and in his position such a betrayal of inner turmoil is extremely dangerous. He is aware of these things.

Nevertheless, as Ray leaves the penthouse he is tense and ruffled, and he wishes he could give the door a good hard slam and shout something obscene, to give vent to his mounting exasperation.

Flanking the only entrance to the penthouse suite, Bob Bryar and Frank Iero startle to guilty attention and Ray barely contains a frown. They are solidly dependable – as much as anyone in this business can ever be said to be – but it seems that Mikey's death has been unexpectedly hard on Iero and as always now, what's hard on Iero is hard on Bryar.

Ray blots out the unintentional innuendo and says, "If McCracken ever actually leaves that room, please be very cautious about letting him back _in_."

Iero brushes too-long hair from his own forehead and worries at a scab on his lower lip. "What about his boys?"

Ray frowns properly this time. "I beg your pardon?"

"They come up here," Bryar elucidates, if that is the correct term for his conversational interludes. Words are not his strong suit. Until recently Ray has been content knowing that 'disappearing' bad debtors and providing an undeniable spectacle in the pits and cages with a sideline in looking menacing were the strong suits of this mismatched but oddly well-matched pair.

In the light of this information Ray is rather more inclined to wish they were capable of singing like birds, but he has to make do with what he's got. As always.

"Which ones?" he asks quietly.

"Usually –" Iero pulls the scab from his lip and it starts bleeding again; Bryar's sigh is audible as he flaps briefly at the shorter man's face, "– usually it's the one with the tattoos. He brings food. And weed. And stuff."

Which is what Ray would have presumed.

"Let him," he says, turning for the elevator. "There is not a vast amount we can do without Gerard's consent."

"Is he, you know –" Iero begins, making the unmistakable sign for 'crazy' but settling for saying, "… all right?" in a very lame compromise between tact and curiosity which owes rather little to the former and too much to the latter.

"Frank," Bryar says, shoving him, "shut up."

The elevator arrives. "_All right_," Ray says, stepping into the empty mirrored box he has known for so many years, "is a highly subjective state, gentlemen."

He shuffles the files in his head as the elevator descends. The prognosis of the situation is looking somewhere in the region of "flaky", agreed, but it is salvageable, assuming he can acquire Gerard's cooperation and a return to vitality from both Way and the business. It is even possible that individuals previously put off by the presence of Mikey "Blank-Faced Sociopath" Way might consent to doing business with the Way-Toro alliance now. It is not impossible by any means … providing that tick McCracken stops perverting the natural course of grief and expedience.

Ray wonders if he should have the man killed. He tries to avoid killing people personally. He's not averse to the necessity of having people made dead, of course, or he wouldn't have lasted a week in the family business - he just doesn't like the feel of life ebbing from a body. And as his father always said, _stand too close to death and, like blood, it will splash up and contaminate you._ It's safest to let someone who enjoys the experience do the dirty, messy work.

He is idly examining the interior of the elevator while his brain ticks over when he notices it: something out of place, a slight bump in the perfect infinity of reflected Ray Toros that sends his clones into distorted disarray. Ray sets his nail file under the rim of the mirrored panelling closest to the bump – he does not carry a knife. A knife is a thief's weapon – and levers it up as delicately as he can.

The panelling is too easy to lift, as if someone has recently done the same thing to it.

His fingertips, questing beneath his own warped reflection (so that he looks like a suit-clad Narcissus reaching for himself in lustful vanity) encounter precisely what he expected to find: a thick blot of plastic the size and approximate shape of a dime, although more hockey-puck shaped. He knows that if he tears it away he will find it is heavier than the size suggests, that it is black, and that one side is covered in tiny holes.

Ray makes a mental note. Further investigation will have to wait until later; he has an appointment with the doctor –

\-- he cringes at the wording of his thoughts. _That was unnecessarily melodramatic, Raymond_, Senior says in his head, _clever wordplay will endear you to no one and alienates the less intelligent members of your organisation. Remember that._ Being dead for six years has not, Ray notes, blunted the force of Senior's admonitions.

Conference Two, a high-ceilinged room with an empty stand where the wide-screen television used to be, is stuffed with Cobras, or at least the remains of the Cobra Gang now that their miniature chain-wielding man is no more.

Ray observes that it would be easy for them to over-power him in this space, and kill him here in this room, and as usual the thought does little to faze him. He has been stage-managing and subtly directing very dangerous men all his life.

They are ranged about the room like adult-rated china ornaments, leaning on various surfaces. Asher – he refuses to commit to her ridiculous fantasies and names in the privacy of his own head – sits cross-legged on the table, a blood-stained and chipped baseball bat across her knees. Blackinton, his wounds healing slowly and badly, has propped himself adjacent to the door with his hair falling over his battered eye. Suarez stands opposite him, against the back wall of the room, sneering, and Saporta himself stand behind the chair to which Dr Palmer is bound, his arms spread behind her like a circus showman's.

"Ray!" he says with both good cheer and friendliness insufficiently faked to convince anyone. He says, 'Ray' and not 'Toro' specifically to get under Ray's skin; it's a cheap and tired trick to which Ray has no intention of rising. "Gift-wrapped and ready: one treacherous medic awaits your attention. Just say the word and I'll –"

Ray holds up his finger for silence like a schoolteacher and retrieves his cell from his pocket. Saporta is trying to steamroller him from his dominant position with an excess of eagerness, a contrived complicity, and this will not do at all. He thumbs down to the appropriate entry in his address book and hits "call" while the Cobras fidget impatient and curious around him. This is part grandstanding and part protection, and perhaps part appeasement for old harms.

A soft voice answers, "'Lo?"

"Could you bring yourself and your equipment to Conference Two, please?" Ray asks, deliberately ignoring the Cobras, and the floppy immobility of Dr Palmer whom, were she not breathing so heavily, he might have mistaken for dead.

"Um, okay. I'll be there in five minutes." He always manages to convey an impression of being taken by surprise by the world and slightly intimidated by it, which fooled Ray maybe once for all of a second. This man is in no way intimidated by anything, and nor does he ask why his services are required. Ray likes that.

"Thank you." Ray closes his cell again. The look Saporta gives him gives him says very eloquently that he knows without being told just whom Ray has invited down to the room, and precisely what his feelings are on that.

Ray counts to five in his head before the lead Cobra spits out, "_Why?_"

"I beg your pardon?" Ray raises his eyebrows. This is a risky stratagem, he'd be the first to concede, but the show of power is necessary, wielding the whip to replace Gerard's presence with something less tangible but hopefully as effective … there is no point speculating now on how much better things would go here if the elder Way sibling would just extract himself from his grief and get on with his job, but Ray is having difficulty preventing himself. This high-risk power play should not be _necessary_, _would_ not be necessary if Gerard were there.

Saporta is many things Ray cannot waste mental energy listing, but 'stupid' has never been one of them. "The good doctor was _our_ discovery, Toro," Saporta says, unfriendly but still laden with the kind of charm money can't buy, "and you're calling in someone else to deal with her?"

_Someone else_, Ray notices, although it's clear that they all know which someone else.

"_Why_?" Saporta continues, sounding momentarily like some television evangelist. "She should be our … responsibility."

Ray does not risk looking around at the other Cobras; he can feel their stares on him like interrogation lamps, and he knows lesser men than he have buckled under even this pressure. Saporta's gaze is direct, penetrating, and convincingly wounded. He's also holding back that he knows _whom_ Ray has just called, and Ray wonders, perhaps recursively, if _he_ knows that Ray knows. It is best to assume that he does.

"Gabriel," Ray says, inclining his head in a mockery of deference that he knows will be read as just that, "I do not recall signing any documents requiring me to account to you for every decision I make as the head of this organisation." He is precise and soft and places just enough emphasis on _head_, and he can see from Saporta's eyes that the words sting, as intended, like physical slaps.

Dr Palmer's head rolls slowly to one side and she eyeballs them vacantly, a thin rope of orange-red drool anchoring her jaw to the front of her waistcoat. While it seems unlikely that the Cobras would have drugged her to move her when Asher is so partial to hobbling prisoners, it is the only explanation Ray can currently advance for such narcotic acquiescence to fate.

"Even so –" Saporta begins, his cheeks flushed with a fire that spells out in pink that he knows who is coming down and is probably unable to contain his ire.

Ray examines Dr Palmer's face from a distance. The drawn-on patterns she usually wears in lieu of eyebrows have smudged until they almost look like real ones, or words in some Arabic script. "You are welcome to withdraw from your duties here for the present and attend to your needs," he says, pretending to ignore them and their unconcealed arsenal, their mounting hostility. "I am sure Dr Palmer does not pose a credible threat to my safety, and I have every faith in Mr. Hurley's ability to extract the information we require."

Saporta spits to one side at the mention of the name and his glare shades to madness and back in the blinking of his long eyelashes. "He'll get you _lies_," Saporta snaps, "that's what Andy Hurley deals in, Toro, he deals in lies and mistrust and that is _all_."

Ray wants to yawn pointedly at this. It is hypocrisy, it is old news, and it is extremely tiresome. All these petty little divisions and hurt feelings are exhausting and unneeded obstacles in the path to a more efficient management of the business. And these _idiots_ never seem to grasp that abandoning these attachments and cooperating would benefit them all; even back in his father's day Senior was always lamenting it: _they think with their hearts and with their balls, and they should be thinking with their wallets – that's why these men will never rule anything, not even themselves._

"Anyone attempting to deceive _me_," Ray says, peering down at Dr Palmer so that it appears he is talking about her and perhaps Hurley – but keeping that attribution coldly ambiguous, "would be making a very foolish and very short-lived mistake." He does not bother to vocalise, 'not a mistake they would be afforded the opportunity to make twice', as it is heavily enough inferred.

There is a cautious, calculatedly arrhythmic knock on the door, and Ray nods to Blackinton to open it. There is a pause while the con artist grapples with questions of hierarchy, no doubt, and the door opens on Andy Hurley.

Freshly-shaven, his hair buzzed back clean to the skull at a length of maybe half an inch, and recently deprived of two fingers on his left hand (the bandage remains on his stump), Hurley does not cut the same swaggering silhouette as Saporta, and with the thick-framed glasses he seems quite inoffensive. Ray knows better, naturally, but he finds the charade if not the ridiculous tattoos almost appealing. Hurley knows how to wear a mask.

He is _also_ mercifully unafflicted with the leadership ambitions that run like a virus through the building, which puts him a step ahead of Saporta in securing Ray's hard-to-win preference. Too many people here want to be in his shoes.

The Cobras react with predictable barely-subsumed hostility, and Hurley's knife is already in his hand, looking as ever like an extension of his body; Ray sighs. Thieves and thugs with their ridiculous safety-blanket sharps and shiny toys.

"Calm _down_," Ray says, allowing just a fraction of his impatience to show in his tone. "Gentlemen – and lady – we have work to do, and I will not tolerate interference in the smooth running of this operation from your _interminable_ quarrels. Are we clear?"

Their silence has to be taken for assent for now. Ray takes up a spot behind Dr Palmer's elbow, edging Saporta away from her without touching him, but as firmly as if he'd shunted with his hips.

"Dr Palmer," Ray says softly, "I would like a word."

Her eyelids flutter, and the drool rope snaps, pooling blood-laced saliva on her décolletage, but this is all the response his entreaty gets.

"Dr Palmer," Ray repeats with limited patience, "I require your full attention, please."

She rolls her head onto one shoulder and regards him with one distended pupil. Ray can't be sure she even understand him, and in his gut a small hard nodule of anger turns and grows – if Saporta _has_ drugged her it throws a very effective wrench in the works and begs some fundamental questions about his loyalties, his plans, and the validity of his continued residence amongst the living.

"Dr Palmer," Ray says a third time. "Amanda. Some indication that you are compos mentis would be _greatly appreciated._"

She blinks slowly and produces an inane grin. "You tied me up," she slurs. She speaks as if her jaw is attached only by elastic, and Ray glances once more at Saporta. He can't help himself this time; there had better be a _very_ good and believable explanation for the doctor's question-hindering state.

Saporta shrugs. "She was like this when we found her."

He is tense, more so when Hurley mutters, "I bet," with a flood of bitter sarcasm that leaves the metaphorical room temperature another few degrees lower.

Ray feels like a kindergarten teacher whose class are all armed with semi-automatics and filled with sugar and hate. He does not express a flicker of this, but checks Dr Palmer's cable tie restraints and her purpling fingertips with a brief glance.

"To the best of my knowledge," Ray says, leaving his audience to fill in the 'which is extensive beyond your imaginations' line themselves, "Dr Palmer is not a narcotics user. To dose _herself_ like this would seem to be … unprecedented … unless, of course, one assumes foreknowledge of this particular eventuality." He puts his palm against the top of the chair, behind Dr Palmer's head, and addresses her, "Who have you been calling, Dr Palmer?"

Her head lolls and she drools a little more. More from reflex than calculated intent, Ray takes a handkerchief from his breast pocket and wipes the bloody spittle from her chin. She blinks again, and Ray wonders if she will actually be capable of answering his questions today even if she wants to.

"If you just give me five minutes," Saporta says, his pride evidently doing the talking.

"I think you've done enough," Ray says, leaving the sentence carefully open-ended.

"She was _like this_ when we _found her_," Saporta reiterates testily, his teeth grated. There is an angry movement of weight around the room and Hurley has his knife in his whole and undamaged hand before Ray can even think the word.

"I was implying nothing," Ray lies, "but that your services, invaluable though they have been thus far, may be of little use with someone so heavily drugged." He is exacting in his semantics, not suggesting either way whether or not he believes her current state to be self-administered. To do so outright would be mildly suicidal, but to allow Saporta off the hook in front of Hurley would also be incautious. "Mr Hurley, if you would be so kind –"

There is a long silence in which Hurley undertakes the apparently arduous task of no longer staring down Saporta, and crouches in front of the woozy doctor with a small, shy smile that fools no one who knows him.

"Um, hi, Amanda. Remember me? Andy?" he says, touching her knee gently at the point where her ludicrous striped stocking is rolled down. "You told me about phantom digits, and um, brain mapping, it was really neat."

She regards him blearily but, Ray is pleased to see, does at least seem to be able to focus a little better on what's being said to her.

The tension in the room remains electric, however, and there is no guarantee that this bubble of non-violence can hold for the entire interrogation; he wishes, suddenly, for Mikey's presence. Off-putting though his blank stare and unshakeable monotone had always been, he was adept at frightening disobedient and unquiet mobsters into line in a way very few could hope to emulate or indeed withstand. His death might have opened a few doors for the organisation, but it is making those doors hell to _reach_.

Ray retrieves his cell again and calls Iero down with two words. It's incautious, high-risk to leave only Bryar to guard the penthouse, and so he adds something cryptic about angels and hopes that between them the two men have the mind to call Stump and Wentz to take his place. And that Wentz and Iero don't pass each other in the corridor.

"So what I'm going to do now," Hurley says, still smiling at Dr Palmer while four furious and cold-staring Cobras burn holes in him with their eyes, "I'm going to ask you to tell me some more stuff, okay? Just little things, nothing complicated like brain maps." His hand brushes at hair that isn't there; Ray speculates on how long he must have had long hair for such a habit to become so deeply ingrained. "And if you answer them I'll let you go back to sleep nice and soon."

There's a slack-lipped mumble from Dr Palmer that, after a couple of tries, resolves itself into a reply that is almost coherent, or at least interpretable. "And if I don't?"

Hurley says, "You know," with an entirely manufactured expression of regret. It looks copied from television, and Ray rather suspects that it actually _is_.

Dr Palmer laughs for quite some time, her head rolling back to expose a throat unmarked by tattoos or scars, a rarity in this building. "I know," she says in a slurred, sing-song voice.

"What did you take?" Hurley asks, as if he is a paramedic with an attempted suicide. Ray jolts – only internally, but it's a worryingly close-run thing – at the unintentional comparison, and flinches his mind away from any further such revealing similes. He steps back from the chair, keeping one eye on Saporta as the Cobras fidget and glare.

There's a surprisingly polite knock on the door – deferential, almost – and Ray pauses. There is little chance it's Iero, who enters rooms rather like he's been thrown into them on the occasions when he _hasn't_ been, and who may not actually know how to knock at all. "Yes?"

Wentz and Stump, like non-identical conjoined twins, take up the doorway, and the Cobras shift more uncomfortably in their seats and slouches. Ray can't decide if he wants to curse or praise whatever misfiring neuron in Iero's hyperactive and frequently-bludgeoned head sent them down here in his stead; it is inevitable that he was trying to start trouble for Wentz, but this configuration may be better than the original that Ray had in mind. Even if he does feel like the thin chain link fence between two packs of very angry dogs.

The interrogator looks up over his shoulder and smiles with unexpected and quite genuine warmth.

"Amanda," Hurley repeats, "what did you take?"

She rolls both her eyes and her whole head in response, staring at him more with her nostrils than her pupils, hair splayed over her forehead. "Morphine sulphate. Many many hundreds of milligrams."

"And you took it yourself?" Hurley persists, "No one made you do it?"

Ray strains for every change in her breathing, every hint of truth or otherwise as Wentz and Stump align themselves behind Hurley like tiny bouncers. Wentz makes a mock-punch at Stump's arm and Stump deflects it so quickly Ray doesn't even see the blur.

"Bzzt," Dr Palmer chuckles, the looseness of her mouth rendering the sound alien and almost unrecognisable, "leading question."

"Amanda," Hurley says gently, "don't make me cut you." He says it with regret and a put-upon edge that Ray recognises from every psychopath he's ever employed and, he's certain, every psychopath he remembers his father engaging too.

Wentz sniggers and the tension in the room tweaks that little bit higher. For once, however, he doesn't appear to want to _say_ anything inflammatory.

"Did you take it yourself?" Hurley asks as if he didn't just threaten to take his murderously efficient blade to Dr Palmer.

"Course," she mumbles, her head drooping forwards again. Hurley peers under the hanging fringe of her hair, and Ray is possessed of the urge to do the same, but does not. This is all very well, but more important questions must be asked and _answered_.

"So, um," Hurley says, stretching Dr Palmer's fingers out along the armrest. She does not resist him at all, her fingers a little stiff but by no means tensed to prevent movement, "are you going to tell me what's up? Who you've been calling?"

There is a strange poetic temporal symmetry in Dr Palmer sitting with her fingers extended for Hurley to remove, Ray thinks, looking at Hurley's hand and the white swaddling the remains of his ring and pinky fingers. Appeasement and interrogation; two birds with one knife. His father might even be proud.

Ray knows that however Dr Palmer cooperates, there must be an excuse for her digits, an eye for an eye or a finger for a finger. No one here is without an overdeveloped sense of vengeance and he's going to have to cater to that; the only person with an adequate, balanced response to insult that he currently knows, Ray believes merely in an eye for an eye, but everyone else here aims to have a necklace of intestines and several litres of blood for an eye.

As Dr Palmer dances around the edges of answers on rubbery lips Ray draws up a mental to-do list, destroys it, and starts again. Every item spawns more items until it looks less like a list than a tree, and everything is subject to such conflicting pressures from everyone else's ill-laid plans that it is almost impossible to predict how to react and how each reaction will affect the overall layout. There is chaos theory, Ray thinks a little despondently and a little wryly, and then there is trying to organise a wide-reaching criminal organisation from the middle of a siege while surrounded by people who are itching to kill each other, or to _fuck_ each other, or both. He's not sure even Senior could have managed this without losing his temper.

After this politics will be easy, Ray thinks. He's still very much lost in his own thoughts as the business of information extraction … unfolds before him. The internships were just the tip of the iceberg, information-gathering ventures organised, of course, by the clever entwining of minds in the extended Toro and Way families – at first just for blackmail material, but Ray had seen wider applications for his position, for that foot in the door. His family might have got him there, the way they got him everywhere (he'd never held a job in his life that wasn't in some way connected to their plans), but he was the one who realised just how much further it could take him.

Senior had been so proud.

Hurley is murmuring things to Dr Palmer, but he's not getting much of a response. His knife is poised over a digit in the same pose as a sausage-slicing deli worker, and although Ray cannot remember anyone bringing one in with them, there is a red plastic bucket sitting directly between Hurley's knees, ready to receive the fleshy offering.

"Your technique's really slipped," Saporta says in a low, needling voice. "Oh bebé, you'd never be this bad at it if you were …"

The finger separates slowly from the hand, Hurley pulling on it with deliberation as he worries the knife in a millimetre at a time – Ray turns his head to watch the Cobras watch Hurley work. He doesn't need to see this again. What he needs to see is the exact moment _before_ someone snaps, so he can be prepared.

"The _old_ Andy would have had all the answers by now," Saporta adds, smiling.

"The _new_ Andy's got a kinda pissy friend," Wentz says with a similar smile, "so maybe you should shut your fucking mouth before Patrick stuffs your own foot into it?"

"The consistent version of Ray Toro," Ray says dryly, despising the use of third person as cheap and melodramatic even as he did it, "would prefer it if we all held our peace and let Mr Hurley continue with his work."

"So," Hurley says, as if no one else has spoken, still fixing his bespectacled gaze on Dr Palmer's as he drops a third finger neatly into the plastic bucket and wipes his hand absently on his bloodied t-shirt, his voice still perfectly calm, "shall we try again?"

"Whatever makes you happy," Dr Palmer slurs in the same blurry, slack-mouthed drawl as before. She appears to be unconcerned by the loss of her fingers.

"Looks like you've lost your touch, Judas," Suarez sneers, apparently uninterested in Ray's potential irritation. "Must have been in the _other_ fingers. Shame."

Hurley says nothing, but his shoulders are very tense. Wentz pipes up again, "And I guess all your brains must have been in the short dude because right now you're sounding _pretty fucking dumb_," and flashes a bright wide smile laced with threats at Suarez; Ray puts his hand on the back of Dr Palmer's chair and wishes he'd been more insistent about throwing all the extraneous bodies _out_ of Conference Two.

He doesn't _tell_ them to shut up this time, merely thinks it while gazing around the room with the coldest look he has currently at his disposal.

Hurley presses the tip of his knife to the clean stump of Dr Palmer's middle finger, against the remnants of a nerve, and says, "C'mon, Amanda, who have you been calling all those times?"

"Brian," she mumbles, and Ray gives a small electric start, something cold gripping his spine. _No._

"Brian?" Hurley repeats encouragingly.

"You killed Brian," Dr Palmer mutters, her hand jerking a little in Hurley's grip, a reflex of pain that clearly has yet to reach her mind. Other than this there is no emotive reaction to her own words; Ray might have wondered how she comes to know about this, but he knows the Cobra's _modus_ too well by now, and he can well imagine their taunts as they carried her in here: _we killed your boy and we're going to kill you, Judas. Traitor bitch._

But Dr Palmer has not finished her solo yet: "That was dumb," she adds, grinning emptily as more drool tumbles out of the corners of her wide mouth, "he'd probably have told you everything … if you'd just … fucked him …" She twitches her mouth into a maniac's grimace which is rather reminiscent of the facial fluctuations of the dead medical student under discussion.

Ray taps the back of her chair, and asks outright, himself, without waiting for Hurley to take the initiative or a cue, "And who has been the recipient of your information, Dr Palmer?"

Her silence leans into his words almost like a response.

"I'm sure you've seen the end results of Mr. Hurley's work, and as a practitioner of medicine I'm sure you know that the agonies a human body can endure before death are quite astonishing," Ray continues, and he's half-way through the sentence before he realises he's adopted a speech-giving tone and can't work out whether to be proud or exasperated with himself for jumping the gun, "Therefore I am also confident that you will be eager to share with us the names and plans of your regular confidantes in exchange for a lessening of what is about to come."

Stuffy, but hopefully effective. Ray toys with mentioning what she has already experienced, but discards the idea. He isn't altogether sure she _has_ fully experienced it, with all that morphine in her system.

Dr Palmer lets her head fall back almost into his hand; he whips it discretely away at the last minute. She mouths, "Ross."

"Ross," Ray repeats for the benefit of the room. "Ross of the Panic boys?"

But Dr Palmer just snickers silently and lets her head fall onto her chest again, a puppet with the strings cut. With another nasty cold jolt Ray thinks of the marionette in the penthouse masquerading as Way, and what Ross must now know, of his vulnerability, of the delicacy and damageability of the entire operation.

"What are you doing for Ross?" Hurley presses, his knife poised over the fourth of Dr Palmer's fingers, posed and suspended in potential seconds, ready to remove it with a slice. "You can, ah, still keep the rest of your fingers if you want to, you know."

"What for?" Dr Palmer's smirk is fixed in place now as if it has been sprayed on. "You're going to kill me anyway."

Hurley tuts as if she's mortally offended him and pats the back of her hand with the two-fingered palm of his non-knife-holding one. "Don't be such a pessimist."

Dr Palmer's laughter is creaking and breathy, the laughter of a drunk near to unconsciousness.

Saporta says, "Maybe you missed your calling as a comedian, Andy-Panda –"

And Hurley tenses up so violently at this prod that his hand jerks and stabs indiscriminately at the nerves of Dr Palmer's sliced-off stump. _She_ jumps and snaps, "ENTRY" as if a key has been turned in her head.

"Is that what you were doing for Ross?" Hurley asks, his breath quickening as everyone in the room leans closer, even Ray. Ray forces himself to straighten up and puts his hands behind his back. Of them all, it is not Hurley but Blackinton who speaks next, shedding light on Dr Palmer's words from a frustratingly vague source.

"Opening a _door_," he says in the tones of one for whom enlightenment is suddenly occurring. He uses his natural accent this time, which suits him even less than his strangled attempts to sound European. He also makes no move, beyond tossing his head, to get his hair out of his eyes, which is not very effective.

"What?" Stump asks, his hat screwed down low and his face in shadow. What Ray can see of his features does not betray any curiosity and he wishes briefly to be somewhere with people who have a normal relationship with facial expressions. Just for a while. Before he forgets what that looks like.

Of course Blackinton looks to Saporta for confirmation that he's allowed to continue speaking and Saporta steals an obvious peek at Ray to determine if concealment will secure more reward than the reveal will. "She said that earlier when we were bringing her in here."

"ONE," Dr Palmer says suddenly, her voice even more slurred than before despite an increase in volume. They hold a collective breath, waiting on her next words. "This quantity of morphine sulphate," she says with woozy deliberation, "is fatal … without … intervention."

Hurley sighs and looks up at Ray, and Ray checks on Saporta just in time to see a schadenfreude-laced smile disappear hastily from his face. Whether schadenfreude is _all_ that causes his self-satisfied smirk remains to be seen.

"Two," Dr Palmer adds, tipping her head back for what Ray believes may well be the last time, her eyes closed and her lips moving slowly, stop-motion animation speech. "How do you know … that the door … isn't … already … open?"

* * *

The back room _behind_ the lobby desk is of course deserted; a large number of the staff have been sent home on paid leave since things started getting more difficult and guests stopped being admitted. Ray is not a monster, and he is also very aware that the longer unneeded staff are required to spend hanging around in this environment the more suggestible they become. Better to reduce the number of potential spies at a modest cost than to engage in threats and unkeepable promises in exchange for uncertain silence.

Although – Ray closes the door behind him and settles slowly into a battered armchair which is sharply at odds with the lines of his suit – he acknowledges wryly that it really does only take _one_ person.

He takes his cell out of his pocket and taps it on the desk beside him, up and down, not thinking but filtering through a series of abstract emotions he does not know well enough to name and does not care to experience often.

After a moment he flicks it open, pauses again, and thumbs through to the appropriate name on the list. There are only three rings before the phone is snatched up:

"Hello?" asks a slightly harassed female voice. It gives Ray pause every single time, this dissonance between what he remembers and what he gets. "Can I help you at all?"

"Hello, Connie, could you put me through to Schechter, please?" Ray asks, keeping his impatience on a short leash and his manners firmly in the fore.

There's a short sharp sigh of inhaled breath and she says, "May I ask who's calling, sir?" Although Ray suspects she at least has an inkling.

"An old friend," Ray says, like he says every time.

Connie sounds doubtful, and slightly pissed off. "Sir, unless you give me a name, I can't put you through. We have a policy." She holds off on the _like I keep telling you_ because it's there in her tone, and because she almost certainly recognises Ray's voice, and she almost certainly remembers telling him this before.

"In which case," Ray says more coolly then he'd been intending to, "please accept my apologies for the egregious wasting of your time, and pass along to Schechter the information that an old friend from college tried to look him up."

"I'll be sure to do that. Sir," she says, sounding ever so slightly annoyed again, enough emphasis on the _sir_ to let him know that she really doesn't mean to be courteous at all. Ray guesses that manners will only go so far against her no doubt formidable backlog of paper work – Brian has always tended to treat his assistants like a cross between a coffee machine and a walking filing cabinet.

He lays the cell, open, on the desk and waits.

Approximately a minute and a half later it buzzes, displaying a different number, and Ray answers with a cautious, "Yes?"

"Ray," Brian's voice comes close and cheerful in his ear. "How are you?"

Ray maintains a pointed silence, and Brian sighs, as loud as if he was sitting right beside him. The room is empty of presence and of sounds, even the usual ticking of an archaic analogue clock has dwindled into nothingness as someone has clearly forgotten to change the batteries, and on the wall the poster demonstrating the location of the first aid kits, fire extinguishers, fire _exits_, and sundry safety measures is wilting like a plucked flower in the summer heat.

"Ray, Ray," Brian says carelessly, "cut it out. It's not being recorded. This is _my_ cell. Chill out."

"It's not being recorded _as far as you know_," Ray corrects, tapping his fingers on the worn leather of the armchair's arm.

"Admirable though your paranoia _is_, no one's had access to this phone but me," Brian says shortly. "Look, do we have to go through this every time? Just get it off your chest. I stand to lose just as much as you –"

Ray merely coughs. Brian does tend to forget that the penalties on his side of the fence are significantly more severe than the prosecution and unemployment _he_ faces.

"—all right, all right," Brian says soothingly, "I'll put my balls on the line and let you know it's safe, okay? We're planning two incursions on the Panic operation in Florida on the 27th of this month, in a pincher. It should be easy enough to pick up the shards once that's been taken care of. Senator Whitchell has been photographed buying from someone we _think_ is connected to Borrell's people, although Borrell's been missing for weeks now – I don't suppose you know anything about that?"

"I might," Ray says carefully, "or I might not know about whom you speak."

"Isn't that enough?" Brian says, and something at his end of the line goes _thump_, "Ow."

"Nothing is underway in this quarter?" Ray asks, inhaling slowly, his fingers pausing in their tuneless tapping. It may or may not be bad news.

"We've got nothing on officially, and nothing on unofficially that's reached me," Brian says with a smile in his voice, "and you know most things get back to me very quickly nowadays. Why do you ask? Standard monthly paranoia or something concrete?"

"I found a listening device in one of the elevators." Ray says, his throat unaccountably tight. Part of him hopes Brian is lying about the absence of agency interference for the sake of not having to deal with unknown factors, but a much older and more visceral part of him would really rather he's not. The idea of being betrayed by someone who is to all intents and purposes a legal enemy anyway should not be such a cold-water pain.

"Shit," Brian says mildly. "What kind?"

Ray once again maintains a pointed silence.

"Look, if I know what kind I can tell you whether it was obtained from agency sources or commercial ones," Brian says patiently, "and I might be able to give you some idea of who's behind it."

"Brian," Ray says with rather less patience, and kicks himself for not saying _Schechter_ like he's been trying to train himself to, "don't pretend not to know that everyone and anyone in this … business … is quite capable of acquiring agency-issue devices without troubling themselves. Your suppliers are not exactly scrupulous and law-abiding individuals."

"They _are_," Brian says, unconcerned, "but they're not necessarily the most thorough when it comes to checking parent companies, you're right."

There is a long silence. Ray can hear people stamping around upstairs, and knows that soon he will have to leave the seclusion of the staff office to turn a withering eye on someone who is behaving like a _prick_ – he is tired, and his usual vocabulary of careful euphemism is elided by lack of sleep – soon he will have to experience the peculiar disappointment of ending this phone call and returning to the more hands-on side of this work.

"Ray?" Brian asks after a slow minute has ticked by. "I can take a look around and see if there are any minor reports I might have missed, okay? Dis is usually sitting on something, and this is kind of a big department, and … sometimes the right hand doesn't necessarily know what the left's doing, you follow?" He swallows. "I'll … look into it. Also, Beckett's getting a lot of business. Not all of it from us."

Ray gives in to the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose and shut his eyes, just for a second. "It's not from us. _As far as I know_."

"Breaks in the ranks?" he sounds sympathetic but Ray cannot afford sympathy from a man in Brian's position.

"None of your business."

"Actually, it's exactly _all_ of my business, but point taken," Brian says quietly. "Put in a call with Councillor Euringer like I told you. He's willing."

Ray takes a note and stuffs it into his breast pocket. "Thank you."

"Are you sure you're okay?" Brian asks, and Ray can hear him tapping _his_ fingers on something in the background.

"Please don't ask that," Ray sighs. "And if it stops you chasing your own tail and focuses you a little further on _inconveniencing_ the Panic operation," he stops and smoothes the top and sides of his head, checking for errant hairs. There are none. "You should probably know that Borrell is no longer with us."

"Dead?" Brian has picked up a pen. Ray can hear it in his voice and in the suddenly muffled quality of the call.

"Extremely."

"Huh," Brian says, his response obscured by, Ray guesses, his chin. "Do I get to find out a reason or do I have to put up with whatever I make up for the forms?"

"What do you think?" Ray asks quietly, getting to his feet. The banging upstairs has taken on a furniture-throwing quality, which suggests that someone is disciplining someone else, and that his presence might not be necessary after all. Then again, one can never tell.

"I think," Brian says, unmuffling again, "that I cannot fucking wait until you put in that call with the Councillor like I keep telling you to, and start moving towards the surface a bit more. I'm sick of this smoke signals bullshit." His voice is unusually raw. "Just for _once_, Raymond. Coffee. A beer. Something that doesn't involve being so … clandestine."

"If you're in that much of a hurry to lose your job," Ray says dryly, "or for me to lose my _life_ …"

"Bye, Ray," Brian says crossly. "I'll poke around and lean on Beckett and Dis and the others."

"Goodbye." Ray shuts the cell and pushes it back into his breast pocket with a worryingly, inexplicably shaking hand. He hasn't been getting enough sleep recently, of course, and there's been a distinct lack of structure to the timing of his meals, and the meals themselves have consisted largely of very hastily-constructed sandwiches, and that is why his hand is shaking.

* * *

Two of the most unsettling people currently under Ray's … supervision … in the absence of any better description of the increasingly untenable situation; two of them come to blows in the following days. There are a _lot_ of violent and dangerous people in the hotel, but Ray has been around such men all his life and it takes a certain degree of mental instability to qualify for "unsettling" in his mind.

For example, though Hurley and Saporta and their artisan torture techniques would be considered horrific by many, to Ray they are merely _useful_ individuals with a useful skill to offer and a rather inconvenient feud. The place is also peppered with former and current prize fighters, cage fighters, pit fighters: Iero, vicious and bloody and hot-tempered, revelling in his destructive energy. Bryar, conveying the impression of some titan lycanthrope at less than six feet tall, a marauding monosyllabic Viking. Stump, an apparent teen prodigy to begin with, a prodigy at open-handed fighting originally discovered by Wentz, whose _own_ propensity for wriggling out of holds in order to poke out an eye was once legendary.

And even the parasite McCracken has been a showy fighter on the canvas; another reason it's inappropriate for him to be so long in the penthouse, Ray thinks. It's unsavoury, not the way things are done to have fighters as confidantes, as equals like that.

But among the melee of professional punchers, knifers, and users of projectile weaponry, there are one or two who tip the scales into unsociable and unpredictable, potentially problematic individuals whose presence is a gamble on their restraint.

In theory, Mikey had been one of those. In practice, of course, there was Gerard, and Ray had known them both from infancy. Mikey could be relied upon to protect his brother even if logic wasn't present in the room while he acted. _Could be_. The eternally-awkward past tense. It is only now that Ray is beginning to grasp the degree to which the monosyllabic, blank-faced Way was the glue that held not just Gerard together, but a large part of the organisation.

Ray is mentally masticating Brian's last words to him: _I think that I cannot fucking wait until you put in that call with the Councillor like I keep telling you to, and start moving towards the surface a bit more_ , when the urgent thump of running feet drags him away from his thoughts and to his own feet at a speed to which he will not publicly admit.

Wentz and Stump are more or less bouncing along the corridor like rubber balls, heading towards a place they have no business being in nor – judging by the state of their clothes – much usual interest in: the enormous hotel laundry room.

Their haste and the glee suffusing Wentz's ridiculous painted face (as far as Ray can ascertain Wentz's primary interests are essentially _looking like a prostitute_, and _punching like a professional_) hint strongly at the prospect of some scuffle; men like these seem to be enormously adept at finding violent trouble even if they can't find clean shirts or proper hairdressers.

He follows at a more sedate pace. _Running_, Senior always said, _only ensures you arrive vulnerable and looking out of control. Always walk. Nothing is so important that it can't be made to wait for a Toro._ And sure enough, when he reaches the wedged-open door to the larger laundry room, the situation has not _quite_ erupted to crisis point.

There is a marked air of the schoolyard about it all; everyone standing in a ragged circle ready to jeer the fight on, no sign of anyone with any conspicuous authority, and a room full of stares aimed straight him as he enters, as though he has walked in on teenagers making out.

Wentz cracks first, stage-whispering at a volume louder than Ray's outdoor voice, "Uh-oh, mom's home," and elbowing Stump in the side. Stump punches him in the arm, but Ray pays them no further attention; there is the beginnings of a fight hanging in the air like the steam and the culprits are a pair that someone of a more _poetic_ bent might refer to as "Beauty and the Beast", although having seen both of them at work and knowing their reputations Ray thinks "Psycho and the Psycho" is more correct.

Allman and Asher – he will _not_ dignify that woman's ridiculous epithet with attention or use – face each other with such tension that it seems almost likely the air between them will burst into flames; Asher's ubiquitous sporting equipment is poised, and Allman has no doubt strapped that nasty, inventive hidden weapon of his to his palm, and the other to his opposite knuckles.

Backing them are, naturally, Blackinton and Suarez, Whitesides and Howard, and there is no sign of either Saporta, who could be anywhere, or McCracken, who is doubtless still glued to Gerard's side. Winding his fingers through the elder Way's hair as his tick self digs deeper into his skin. Ray has no doubt that it is the absence of their leaders which has led to this face-off, an absence of good sense in the sheep that might allow them to see how inopportune mere grudge-settling is, now, for _everyone_.

"Do I really have to _tell_ you why that you're about to do is a bad idea?" he sighs, adjusting both his idiom and the lie of his weight so they can all see the outline of his gun. It's crude, and he dislikes it. Words and presence ought to be enough, that was Senior's way, the tidy, sensible way. A _politician_'s word is his primary weapon, after all.

But he knows they are tired of listening, and that these two especially, Allman and Asher, listen least of all to men like him.

So he is not wholly shocked when they ignore him; Stump mutters, "C'mon, _leave_," and shoves Wentz, and Wentz reluctantly shuffles his feet, reminding Ray of that _gutting_ truism: the only person he can depend upon to be at his side now is himself. It is a little like falling over. His family – and Family – will avenge him should the worst occur and should it prove prudent to do so (because they are not stupid), but that's scant comfort to a dead man.

"You're a dead man," Asher says, and Ray nearly jolts until he realises she is addressing Allman, with one of her alarmingly pretty smiles, "You fucking ugly prick, _dead_."

Allman says nothing. Whitesides, however, offers the sage and sardonic, "He looks alive to me, _Victooooooori_ah. You should get your eyes checked." His hand is on something in his pocket, but the other rests gently on the back of Howard's neck, a man with a pitbull.

"Oh, he's dead-dead if Vicky-T wants him dead," Suarez smirks from the opposite corner, leaning on a silent and still laundry machine, "he's just too dumb to quit breathing yet. _Salió del coño de una puta._" He doesn't spit, but the curl of his lip makes it clear that were he the kind of man who spits in laundry rooms, he would spit.

"Ahem," Ray says sharply, but they ignore him again. It is a good thing he is a temperate man, Ray thinks, because otherwise the urge to pistol-whip one of them would become an action, and he's not sure he'd survive making a move on one of them.

"Still not looking very dead," Whitesides says, peering at Allman critically. "Maybe you should check what 'dead' looks like." He fidgets whatever is in his pocket, "Or we could kill one of _you_ and then you can learn about the difference between 'alive' and 'dead'. Like Sesame Street."

Mock-thoughtful, stroking his own chin, even, Jepha says brightly, "Oooh, I know this one. 'Alive' is what Quinn is!"

"Yup," Dan says, and Ray can see his fingers flex over the back of Jepha's neck. Really. Who on earth thinks like that in the middle of a fight? "Gold star."

"And 'dead' is –"

"What he's going to be," Suarez interjects snidely, "in about ten seconds." Neither Allman nor Asher are talking now, just sizing each other up intently, tense and ready.

"- '_dead_'," Jepha says sweetly, "is what Nate is."

Asher snarls. Ray realises, with this absurd animalistic display, that he is not going to make any headway in this situation with words, and once again that there are only a severely depleted number of people he can trust now to keep the uneasy peace in this hotel.

"Okay?" asks a quiet and immediately recognisable voice behind him, from the laundry doorway.

Ray acknowledges McCoy's presence with a small shake of his head; he's still not sure how trustworthy the man is, but for the time being the mere fact that he isn't actively trying to kill anyone or goad anyone else into killing someone _right at this minute_ is refreshing and disproportionately welcome.

The distraction is, however, immediately unhelpful.

Allman takes advantage of the brief flicker in Asher's attention, in everyone's attention, and lunges with the stopping power of someone twice his size. Ray is fascinated in spite of himself and of the inconvenience, here in the centre of this fragrant hot hell of industrial laundry and scented steam and soon-to-be-ruined expensive bed linens; Allman fights like a man on PCP. There had been experiments, some nasty and unrepeated and hushed-up experiments of which Brian had generously allowed him to watch the observance logs, and the movements are the same, the focus is the same, the lack of restraint is the same.

"Uh," says McCoy, hesitant, "is this a _good_ idea?"

It's a question clearly addressed to him, feeling out the correct position to take in this steamy impromptu fight room. Ray suspects McCoy of being significantly more intelligent or at least more cunning and better educated than the average thug, and that's something he's going to have to explore … later.

"No," Ray says under his breath. It's loud enough for McCoy to hear; it's probably loud enough for everyone else to hear, but the rumbling machines may have dulled their senses. He can't be sure.

Asher has recovered in the time it takes for him to think, and she swings her bat into Allman's flank with a crunch, her hair transcribing a mirror arc of movement unheeded by the woman fighting – it doesn't _appear_ to break any bones but it's the kind of blow that can do untold internal damage to even the most solid of men, and Ray almost winces in sympathy just as the other spectators of this carnage do. Allman is not a solid man.

Allman moves _toward_ her again, driving his hand palm-out at her torso, moving as if he hasn't been hurt at all. Asher twists at the last minute and the spike in Allman's grip punctures not her chest but her inner, upper arm, and she drops the bat automatically; Allman is on her instantly, like an attack dog. She kicks him square in the stomach, over the damage that she has already done, but Allman doesn't seem to register the pain at all, and slashes his hand at her face – she pulls back at the last moment -

"ENOUGH," Ray shouts. His voice is steady as a rock, his body firm, concealing just how angry he is, keeping the shakes and the blind fury internal; the volume will have given them some indication of how displeased he is. Ray Toro is not noted for shouting often.

Sure enough, Suarez and bruised, bandaged Blackinton and their opposite numbers begin trying to drag the two combatants apart almost right away; it is not an easy task for them, for all that their efforts are genuine: Asher has locked her legs around Allman's with deceptive strength and although bleeding from the tricep of her dominant arm she is scrabbling for her bat with the other hand.

Meanwhile Allman, nose bleeding from a blow Ray didn't see, is twisting and trying to catch her thigh with his spike, to bleed her to death; his determination is mono-focused and so far he has managed two deep gouges but nothing arterial. She elbows him in the face as Suarez catches her by the armpit and tries to drag her away.

"C'mon, Vic_tor_ia—"

Whitesides carefully hooks long fingers under Allman's shirt collar and tugs, a gesture rather than an action intended to produce a definite physical effect, while Howard tries to pry Allman's legs free of Asher's.

"Gentlemen," Ray says as the dog fight is, little by little and with concerted effort, broken up, "there is no place for your childish _bullshit_ here." The word is deliberate. He very rarely profanes within earshot of non-intimates, and its impact is the same when he does as if he _had_ given in to the urge to pistol-whip them all. They seem outright stunned. "Your petty vengeance-seeking behaviour puts us all at risk, diminishes the protection against outside incursions for us _all_ \- _all_, gentlemen, includes yourselves and your … leaders." The rage is still apparent in him; he knows it, and he knows it is a fine line he treads between admonitory anger and displaying some emotional weakness. "You," he indicates Suarez, Blackinton, and Asher with nothing more than a directional stare, "were _present_ for the confession. Incursions are growing bolder and more persistent: your lives, the lives of Saporta … and McCracken … of everyone here … are potentially endangered every time you start this _intolerable PISSING ABOUT._"

Asher is on her feet, more or less, cradling her bat like a treasured pet or a child in her arms as her compatriots tug at her. She flicks her hair out of her eyes and glares at him; it is the stare of an enthusiastic killer, and Ray has seen enough of those not to flinch or inhale when her gaze meets his.

"Vicky-_T_," Suarez says sharply, "Vous pouvez finir de lui tué un autre temps."

"Pas ici. Ne pouvez pas faire ça ici," Ray says, just as sharply. What kind of idiots are these, who think they can put one over him by speaking a Romance language instead of English? Do they imagine he didn't _go_ to school?

Suarez gives him a sour look and with the beginnings of a minor tug of war on Asher's uninjured arm developing, jerking her about like a very dangerous toy, Blackinton and Suarez successfully shepherd the bleeding, panting, furious woman out of the laundry rooms.

As Ray watches them leave, McCoy flashes him a wan half-smile from what seems like an unlimited store of similarly rueful facial expressions, and cocks an eyebrow before tagging along behind the departing Cobras. Externally, Ray nods stiffly, but internally he's perplexed: does McCoy mean to keep an eye on the remaining Cobras to prevent them from ambushing McCracken's footsoldiers? _Why_ offer this help without looking for some obvious and financial reward? Is McCoy playing a longer game, looking to climb within the currently beleaguered organisation, and if so, with what end in mind? And _where_ is Saporta?

With all these questions buzzing and sparking new queries in his mind Ray is close to rubbing his face with his hands in an attempt to secure a grip on his own thoughts – the muscles in his arms even twitch – but with McCracken's minions in the room he can't reveal that crack in his defences. He inhales carefully, making sure his breath is even and slow. "It is possible," he says dryly as Whitesides sits on Allman's squirming body and Howard murmurs into the man's ear, "that you could have made it _more_ obvious who is responsible for demise of Novarro, but I think _only_ by putting up posters and taking out an ad in a national paper before running around with a loudhailer."

The look Whitesides gives him straddles sheepishness and menace as neatly as Whitesides himself straddles Allman's torso.

"Please refrain from further slaughter of the _allies_ within this hotel," Ray says, trying to curtail his frustration. Allman has stopped struggling beneath Whitesides's thighs by now, his breaths still coming in short bursts, and Howard links his inked fingers to the scabbed ones of the man supine on the floor.

"_Allies_," Allman sneers as Whitesides cautiously climbs off him. His mouth is stained red and what is left of his hair is as wild as his eyes are dead. There are scratches and scrapes all over his face; his is the face of a car crash victim, but his voice is merely laced with spite and ugly predictions. "They'll stab you in the fucking back the same as anyone else, _Toro_." It is not advice or a warning, simply curdled thoughts spilling from the mouth of a lunatic.

"And I'm sure you will be there when they do to stab me in the front, Allman. _In the meantime_, try to remain uninjured," Ray resists the urge to flatten his hair; it is not ruffled, he merely feels ruffled and wishes to externalise it into motion. And he can't, he mustn't, he absolutely cannot afford to demonstrate an iota of internal disarray. "We are after all … currently without medical supervision should another incident occur." He knows word will have reached them about the issue with their doctors, even if the details have managed to escape them; Wentz is a gossip of indiscriminately wagging tongue and highly-developed schadenfreude and Allman, he can guess, probably has a very precise mind to go with his very uneven temper.

Allman spits. Ray ignores it. Howard begins to hum a nursery rhyme as Ray turns on his unblemished heel and leaves them; it's a familiar enough tune that he can place it as a nursery rhyme, but he cannot place what it _is_ until he reaches the conference rooms: Humpty-Dumpty. _All the King's horses and all the King's men …_

Ray takes several deep breaths in the privacy of the empty, featureless room, and contemplates striking out for the surface at last.

* * *

Gerard Way touches the spit-flecked bathroom mirror. It's dark, though he's fairly sure it's day outside. He doesn't bother switching on the light. His face is pale, beyond its usual unnatural whiteness.

When you die, the blood and fluid in your body settles like sediment in a still river, the flesh pressed closest to the earth turns red and black like a bruise, and the top the pale white of death. _Palor mortis_. Gerard has seen it. His eyes and hair are like dark charcoal smudges, sketched by wild shaky hands and dirty fingers. The tips of his ears are still faintly blue-black from the last time Mikey had dyed his hair.

Mikey.

Mikey. Mikey, who at a year and a bit old, had to be convinced that Gerard's name wasn't, in fact, "mine", his little eyebrows drawn together, his soft hands wound up in Gerard's shirt. His little brother who had never slept in his own bed since he was old enough to be able to crawl out on his own and totter on shaky legs to curl up in the hollows of Gerard's body. Gerard always woke up in time to carry Mikey back to his own cot, to avoid Ma's ire, her distracted frown and snapping about not encouraging him, so busy she rarely caught them anyway.

Gerard can't look at himself in the mirror anymore. The glossy black countertop is strewn with barely visible black hairs, shiny dirty finger prints, flecks of toothpaste and spit, the strange whiteness of skin and dust clinging to the edges of everything.

The toothbrush holder. Gerard's toothbrush still sits alongside Mikey's. Their childhood room was, in name, Mikey's room, but since Gerard had moved into the penthouse, Mikey hadn't spent a night out of his bed. All his things are here. Still here.

Mikey was still young enough to always be at Ma's hip, when their father died. His white little face was bloodstained by the dirty hands of the occasional, makeshift, emergency babysitter. She had always wanted to raise her children herself, at any cost, even after the weight of the empire had fallen on her shoulders.

Gerard rests his forehead against the cold mirror and resists the urge to bang his head there until the glass shatters and covers the skin cells and hair follicles and little bits of dirt that are Bert's and his and _still Mikey's_, little dead pieces everywhere. Everywhere.

_Gerard is nine and Mikey is five. _

They are sitting beside their mother, ringside at a fight. Gerard is reading a comic in front row seats, and only vaguely interested in the carnage other people have paid significant sums of money to watch. His mother turns to him and tells him to watch his brother. Gerard glances up from his comic book world of black, white and red, to the real world that's painted in close to the same hues.

He nods vaguely to his mother, who's already stalking away on crow-thin legs, black stockings and high black stilettos, bobbing away as easily as if she were barefoot. He glances at Mikey, whose skinny little arms are loosely bent elbows and wrists, his hands palms up in his lap, his skinny little legs hanging perfectly still over the edge of the chair, his eyes fixed on Toro Sr.'s latest man in the ring.

Gerard follows Mikey's hypnotized gaze, thinking at least he won't have to do much to keep an eye on him, not that Mikey is ever terribly hard to look after. Toro Sr.'s man is grasping the short hair at the back of his opponent's neck and slamming his head into the ground. Gerard, this close, can hear the sound of it, _thud thud thud_, over the chattering crowd. Gerard's mostly bored by fights, unless something really awesome happens, some Batman-like feat; unlike Mikey, who watches every fight he goes to with an intensity that, even at nine years old, Gerard knows is unusual.

But it's just Mikey, it's just his little brother. He takes Mikey's hand and looks back at his comic.

At some point, Mikey's fingers slip out of his, and he doesn't notice until he finally looks up and realises Mikey is gone.

Gerard remembers standing up fast, his book fluttering to his feet very slowly. He glances around him, but can't see Mikey, can't see anything through the crowd, people standing and shifting and making their way out to the bar between fights. It's a sea of legs and heads and swinging skirts and jackets.

He finally locates their security guard, talking to a thin, tall woman that was sitting in the row behind them. _That guard is in so much trouble_, Gerard thinks, _he's so going to get fired_. Then, _I am in so much trouble_. Mikey is accident-prone: he's full of a strange fearlessness, unconscious of his own mortality.

Gerard bites his lip and glances at the security guard's back.

He goes to find Mikey. He is worried, not about Mikey's safety, no one would _dare_, but about what his mother will say if she finds out he hadn't been watching his brother. They were always meant to look out for each other. _Always._

He wanders around the ring and down the only aisle that doesn't slope upwards with the seats, the one that goes towards the back rooms. He doesn't remember ever coming back here, it's all cold concrete and everything looks the same. Eventually, he puts his head around a half open door and finds Mikey, sitting on the knee of a vet. Gerard immediately dislikes the doctor.

"Well, hello, Gerard," the doctor says, cheerful, as if he knows Gerard personally, as if he's allowed to talk to him, as if they're on the same level. "Look what I found," he bounces his knee, "your brother's gonna be a doctor when he grows up. Knows how to handle a needle, don't you Mikes?"

Mikey gives Gerard the little smile he mostly reserves for him, and squirms until the doctor lets him slip down off his knees to the floor.

"That was so cool," Mikey says.

Gerard holds out his hand and Mikey takes it.

"His name is Mikey," Gerard says, looking right at the doctor, pulling himself up as tall as he can. He squeezes Mikey's fingers tight. Gerard looks around the room they're in. There is a foamy mouthed corpse strapped firmly to a gurney, wounds no longer bleeding, but still open and red.

It's not the first time Gerard has seen a corpse, but it is the first time he's seen one his brother created.

The doctor gives Mikey the needle, like poisonous lollypop capped in plastic, the overdose of green anaesthetic still clinging to the inside of the chamber.

"Hey, Gee," Mikey says. He yawns and snuggles into Gerard's side. Gerard walks them out.

_Gerard wonders, later, years later, if this was one of the little things that had made Mikey … Mikey_.

Gerard sweeps his hand across the bathroom counter; the toothbrush holder shatters. He turns his back on it, stumbles out of the en-suite and sits on the edge of his bed. A few dirty shirts, stiff at the underarms, slide off the bed as it dips. Gerard kicks them away, and reaches up under the pillow. Mikey's Iron Maiden shirt, the one he'd always slept in, is balled up in his fist. It still smells like Mikey, unshowered and sleep-warm. Gerard doesn't remember who put it there—he's not sure. He squeezes his eyes shut.

When Gerard is eighteen and Mikey is fourteen, Gerard steals a bag full of cocaine from a big, tanned Italian boy with a bad habit, the same rich-kid automatic ticket to the parties Gerard goes to, and a hate-on for Gerard. He finds out, of course, but Gerard is old enough to realise that his mother's position makes the boy's threats fairly laughable. For him to hurt Gerard would be suicide, Gerard is all too aware of this. Gerard laughingly offers him some coke at the next party and the boy's face goes brick red before he tells Gerard he's going to _cut off your fucking fingers, asshole, as soon as you stop hiding behind your mommy._

Gerard takes a bump and laughs in his face. It wasn't Gerard's finest moment, it was dab in the middle of the few years of his life he can't remember being _sober_ in.

In bed that night he pays for the night he's had, vodka and far too much stolen cocaine. He lies in bed and sweats out chemicals and feels like he's on fire, he's going to implode.

Mikey crawls into bed with him, right on schedule. He noses under the covers from the bottom of the bed, crawls up and under Gerard's arm, settles his head on Gerard's chest, where his heart's trying to beat through his ribs.

Mikey is oblivious, just the same way he always seems to be, ignoring Gerard's shaking, his harsh breathing, the way he'd ignore it any other time. Whether Gerard's jerking off or coming down, without the decency to be embarrassed. Gerard has forgotten what privacy is like: he wraps his arms around Mikey and traces shaky patterns under his shirt, onto his bare shoulder.

Gerard tells Mikey about the bag of coke under his bed, about the asshole who threatened to take his fingers. "Take my fucking fingers," Gerard snorts. He runs his fingers through Mikey's hair, hyper-conscious of the movement, the feeling of Mikey's hair, soft and washed free of hairspray for once. Mikey puts one thin leg over Gerard's, wraps them together. Mikey is quiet, the way he is when Gerard needs him to be, lets Gerard talk and talk and talk.

The next time Gerard goes to a party, he doesn't see the fuckwit, and wonders hazily if he's actually succeeded in pushing him away from the same places Gerard frequents.

When he comes home, though, he realises what's happened. Mikey offers him a box. Inside the box are fingers.

"Wouldn't let him hurt you, Gee," Mikey offers.

Gerard can think of nothing to say, so he simply says "Thank you," and lets Mikey crawl into bed with him. He learns to be careful, with Mikey. He learns to be _specific._

Because Mikey is who he is, and Gerard is who he is.

Mikey gives him a lot of gruesome presents, a lot of cat-presents of dead things and half-dead things, broken things. Fingers (first), then hearts and hands and heads, and, sometimes, whole people - like Bob.

_No more presents, now_.

He knows there are people, some people, most people that would say that Mikey wasn't capable of love. But Mikey is the reason Gerard has _always_ felt loved: when no one else was there, Gerard could look over his shoulder and more often than he'd see his shadow, he'd see Mikey, looking at him, up to him, his rare smile quirking his shut lips, his glasses slipping off his nose.

That Mikey would die for him - the thought has always been, if not a comfort, something that made him feel safe, loved. But the reality of it is that _dying for Gerard_ means that Mikey is _dead_.

Gerard's chest fills up and his throat closes. Every time he thinks it, he is sure he's going to stop breathing. He was sure, when his hand was in Mikey's bloody, slick one, grasping so hard he could barely uncurl his fingers when it was over, that he was dying too. That that was death. Gerard and Mikey have always made one whole person. Gerard was born with too much emotion and not enough violence, and Mikey had been born with not enough of the former and endless, depthless amounts of the later. Gerard had felt torn in half as Mikey died. Not sliced or cut, but _pulled_, sinew and cartilage and bone cracking and tearing and bleeding.

Gerard stands (alone) in the unnatural daytime darkness of the bedroom and sways on his feet, blinking tears out, gripping the shirt hard in his hand. He has no energy to go through the physicality of crying: he has sobbed until he thought he was going to choke, he's screamed and yelled and squeezed tears out into Bert's neck, Bert's hands, until he thought he had no tears at all left. But he does, so he stands still and quiet and he lets them fall.

* * *

Gerard leaves the bedroom, rubbing his stinging eyes. He wanders out stumbling, zombie-like, deathly pallor and shuffling steps. He's cried too much and smoked too much, and his eyes sting. There are too many memories in the penthouse bedroom, too many dead things and nothing living at all.

Bert isn't here in anything but the stale sweet smoke and the smell of sex, the stains of the sheetless mattress. The room is filthy. Gerard doesn't care. Half the staff have been sent home, Ray and Gerard deciding there was too much risk of civilian casualties even before Mikey. Ray implied things were getting out of hand even inside, now.

Gerard musters nothing more than a mental shrug for this, just as he only shifted his shoulders vaguely for Ray when he'd said it. If things have continued the winding path downwards since Gerard was down there in the thick of this war, then he can guess how things are outside.

Bloodshed, backstabbing, betrayal.

Gerard thinks about Dr. Palmer's words. _If he'd been brought in immediately_.

The rooms stink. Gerard can smell it, sharp and death like as a perforated bowel. As an open gut wound. His brother.

He lets the door swing half shut, walks through the lounge, pushes the heavy office door open. He sits in his father's chair, his mother's chair. _His_ chair, he supposes. He doesn't like it. The back is high and imposing, rising like the collar of a pantomime vampire's cape. The black leather creaks as he sits, as if it knows he dislikes it and would prefer if he didn't sit.

Gerard drags his phone off the desk, bends his back, lets the phone hang between his knees from his limp hands. He knows what he has to do. He does not want to.

The office, study, hasn't changed in years and years. The bedroom, that's the only space he inhabits in any living way (clothing and shoes and boxes less unpacked than gutted, comics and CDs and clothing spilling everywhere).

The office is the realm of ghosts. The creaking chair, his mother's dolls watching him with glass eyes, cosy and close to his father's taxidermied animals, like pale-skinned, dead-eyed brides. There is weaponry, a collection antique and perfect, that was both his father's and his mother's.

Gerard has very faint memories of sitting of his father's knee and being allowed to touch, awed and amazed by the attention as much as by the sword across the desk in front of them. He is allowed to touch the cold blade of an ancient sword, to carefully feel the sharpness of the edge. His father smells like polish and cigar smoke. He can't remember what he looks like. His mind substitutes the very few photos he's seen a thousand times.

He looks up from his hands, at the desk's edge. He's slumped so his eyes are level with the surface, to the gun in the glass case that sits front and center on the polished wood. He has far less faint memories of that gun. It was his mother's.

The ancient Colt is engraved prettily, its ivory grip carved with a unicorn's head.* Old, but working still, through more loving care than many people here got. Gerard had learned to shoot alongside that gun, his mother's steady hands, her long-nailed finger on the trigger.

Another thing she had refused to give up, though she had no time for it, and at least at first; she taught her boys to shoot. Gerard is a good shot, but he has never enjoyed guns. Learning would have been a chore, if it weren't for Mikey. He remembers Mikey's look of concentration, his focus, he remembers thinking _why do I have to learn_, and Mikey's small, sideways smile when he hits the heart of a target, again-again-again.

Pleased, deadly, asking quietly for approval of something he's very proud of. Gerard remembers thinking, _that's my weapon right there._ He remembers his mother cuffing him around the back of the head, telling him to stop watching Mikey until he can fucking well hit his own target.

"Fuck," Gerard says quietly. He is too tired to slam his hand on the desk, to smash something, to tear something apart. This place is so full of memories, from a fucking _toothbrush_ to a gun, even the dark, seemingly empty walls have breathed them all in and when he looks, he sees his father, his mother, his brother there, trapped in the paper and paint. He can never, ever escape. He feels small and out of place. _Alone_ in a room full of staring eyes. Abandoned.

Gerard calls Bert. There is still comfort in the thought of Bert's voice. Gerard shuts his eyes, as if he can close out the feeling. Bert answers on the second ring, there's a strange echo, which Gerard realises isn't just in his head when the study's heavy door creeks open and Bert says "hello," into his phone, even as he meets Gerard's eyes. Bert's eyes are still the same blue. His smile is still the same smile. Dr. Palmer's words are still the same. _If he'd been brought in immediately_.

Maybe Bert is the same because Bert has _always_ been lying. The thought hurts, where Gerard wasn't sure there was room for more feeling. He closes his phone and drops his head again.

_This is the first time Gerard sees Bert McCracken: _

He is inside a chain-link cage. Gerard is old enough that mostly he watches now, conscious of the image he is projecting, conscious of how his behaviour reflects on his mother, conscious of the bodies and the strange sexuality of the fights. He doesn't fetishize the violence like some people here do, but he has learnt to appreciate it, half-naked, beautiful bodies colliding wet and hard.

Bert is something else again.

Bert shakes his head, spit and blood and beer-puke flying everywhere (the other fighter, the bigger guy, had punched Bert in the stomach hard and Bert'd stopped drinking approximately five minutes _into_ the fight). He's pinned and he laughs, coughs and drools out "ohhhhh, please, no mooooore," with a demented giggle that makes some of the crowd look away, that makes Gerard's face heat with the feeling he's watching something he shouldn't be, that this isn't right, there's just something wrong.

The bigger guy gets off him, a smug, sneering smirk on his face, as if this is beneath him, as if Bert is, as if he's won. He turns his back.

His smile is frozen awkwardly, deadly surprise on his face when Bert's small hands lodge in his hair and his flying-leap momentum slams them both into the chain-link fence hard enough a few twists of metal holding the wire to the frame of the cage tear a little and the links sag backwards with the force and the weight.

People shift, titter, in the front row the cage wall is sagging over. Even as the other guy gets his face off the metal, regains his feet, standing with Bert still wrapped around him, thighs and wiry arms, he stumbles. Gerard is unsure what's happened, until after a hushed second the blood pumps, one harsh burst then less with no pressure, then less, then a trickle, sealing the guy's fate and ripping a terrible cheer out of the crowd.

Gerard is silent, rapt.

The bigger guy stumbles, there's a meaty, damp thud as his bare back hits the mat, Bert on top. Bert jumps up and spits, something red that's thicker than just blood and splats audibly on the ground in the silence that follows, the gobbet of _neck_ lies wet on the mat in the suddenly airless room as the crowd pulls its collective breath back only to let it break again in a screaming wave.

The guy on the floor twitches, a macabre puppet, but Gerard knows that it's just death pulling his strings a final time.

Bert does a back-flip and bows.

When he looks up, Gerard meets his eyes. From his ringside seat of honour, between his mother and Mikey, he can see Bert's eyes are electric blue, and he watches Bert blow him a kiss from under a curtain of sweaty hair.

He was every brave, bold, amazing, hypnotizing, bloody thing Gerard was sure he wanted to be. He was _perfect_. He played the game with a smile on his face and made everyone in the room love him, even, it seemed, those who'd lost quite a bit of money betting against him.

Despite the fact that Gerard was logically aware that his family was paying Bert to be there, when Bert came over to them afterwards, without a handler, kissing the upturned hand of a security guard and dodging past him as he froze, confused, he was breathless, amazed, that Bert would grace him with his presence.

His shockingly crude, shockingly _intelligent_ presence. Self-educated, Gerard learned later, with a mind like a sponge. Thirsty, but there were always inexplicable holes in his knowledge, or his logic. His hands shook as he offered Gerard one, apparently unaware that this wasn't really _done_, that his palm was still sweaty and bloodstained.

Gerard's hands are sweaty too, but he blames the heat of the fight room. Bert meets his eyes, flushed and shining, his depthless dark pupils dilated with adrenaline or drugs or. Or. Gerard doesn't know, but he smiles back without any hope he could rival the free, unfettered look of joy on Bert's face.

"I'm Gerard," he offers.

"I know," Bert replies, smiling harder. Gerard blushes. "I'm Bert."

"I know," Gerard says back.

His eyes will not leave Bert, but his head tells him that nothing can happen. It's unlikely he'll get to speak to Bert again – if he fights again, there's still no guarantee he'll _win_.

Standing behind Bert, outside the ring of security, is Quinn Allman. Quinn is, at first, someone Gerard thinks he understands. Quinn Allman is the reason Gerard stops staring at Bert and really _looks_:

Bert frowns back at Quinn and Gerard gestures for them to let him through. Quinn walks forward silently, and Bert says thank you. There is a threatening, animal thing behind Quinn's muddy plain eyes. He glares and sucks in a snorting breath, like he wants to spit, but instead stands at Bert's shoulder, still tense, but more at ease than he'd looked when he'd been so far away.

"Who's your man?" Gerard asks.

Bert laughs. It's a laugh Gerard hasn't heard before, it's not polite, it's not respectful, it's not scared or cruel, or hateful or mocking. It's. Gerard doesn't know. It's Bert.

"That's my Quinn," Bert says easily.

Gerard feels a dry forehead fit against the curve of the back of his neck. Mikey mumbles warmly into his skin that Ma wants him to meet someone. He reaches around unconsciously and palms the hairspray-stiff nest of hair on the back of Mikey's head, reassurance he's heard, he's listening. Mikey responds more easily to touch, sometimes.

"Who's your man?" Bert echoes him. Amused.

Gerard can't help but play Bert's game with a smile on his face. "This is my Mikey." He catches, or is caught, in the light/dark of Bert's eyes again.

_When Ma dies and the war becomes inevitable, Gerard remembers Bert. He asks Ray to send someone to find him. The look of distaste Ray gives him is expected._

"They'll be useful," Gerard says.

Ray agrees and Gerard knows that useful forever outweighs distasteful for Ray Toro.

That was the first time.

This is _also_ the first time Gerard sees Bert McCracken: right now. The man who has slept by Gerard's side, because Mikey went and took all Gerard's sleep with him. Bert brought a little of it back. The man who'd brought one of Mikey's killers here. There is something in that that makes Gerard's skin crawl and his heart ache equally. Bastard.

"You desired to see my tasty ass again, O King?" Bert says. Casual, casual. This is Bert, still just Bert, he who is equal parts Shakespeare and sewer, philosophy and piss.

Gerard doesn't look up as Bert enters the room, rubs his face against his hands blindly, tiredly. Bert's feet are as strangely silent as his voice is strangely loud.

"Bert," Gerard says, and can't bring himself to say anything else. He takes a steadying breath and is thankful he seems to have no tears left, or none to spare for this.

Bert's suddenly right in front of him, his sweet-pot scented fingers brushing through Gerard's greasy hair.

"Hey," Bert says, "hey, hey," then to the tune of a lullaby Gerard knows but doesn't remember, "hey, hey, hey, hey, heyheyhey." It's strange and strangely soothing, still.

Bert takes his wrists and pulls his hands away from his face. Gerard slumps forward further. He doesn't want to look at Bert now, worried what he'll see, what he won't see, but Bert pushes. He slides his thin legs either side of Gerard's thighs, there's space enough in the chair, and Bert is flexible and small.

Bert's fingers find the side of Gerard's face, press gently at his cheek, push his dirty lank hair behind his ear, again when it slips forward, again. Gerard lets him. He lets him put his hand on Gerard's neck and when Bert ducks his head down, looking nearly upwards to meet Gerard's eyes, Gerard lets him.

Bert knows. He knows. What's he thinking? Does he feel guilty? Were his pained frowns for Gerard real, or mocking? Is he really so good an actor? Did he _love_ Gerard? Gerard wonders if he's actually this naive. He wouldn't have thought so. There was something real there. He's ... not sure of it at all.

"What do you need?" Bert asks.

He kisses Bert's lips. Bert tastes of stale smoke and Gerard's expensive liquor. He kisses back soft, filthy, distracting. Perfect. Gerard pulls away, breathing heavier than he'd wanted too, less controlled. He leans back, grasps Bert's wrists and holds him still, until he can look him in the eye.

"I need you to call Quinn up here."

Bert won't look at him, but slides off Gerard's lap, to his feet, and immediately puts his phone to his ear. His face is hidden behind his curtain of dark hair, but before he walks out of the room he pauses and gives Gerard a quick grin, normal and free and sharp-edged.

Gerard, for one more shocking, hopeless second, thinks that maybe. Maybe Bert _really_ doesn't know. Maybe Quinn just ... hadn't told him. Then he thinks of shaking Bert's hand that first time, thinks of Quinn's face at Bert's shoulder. He thinks of Mikey. (He thinks, guts knotted, about the fact that Bert has Quinn at all). There is no way Quinn wouldn't have told him. Quinn couldn't have not told him.

Gerard's fingers tighten audibly on the edge of the seat, either side of his legs, where Bert's knees have left the leather warm.

No.

Bert had known.

* * *

The knock at the door is rapid and loud. Frank's knock. Gerard can guess that they don't want to let Bert and Quinn in together without his explicit permission. They're thinking about his safety. Gerard could not care less, right now, about what he _should_ do here. What the head of the family would do. What is pertinent, what is safe. The only thing he cares about right _now_ is what he knows he has to do.

Gerard pushes his hair back, knows it looks like a mess, but feels more able to face people again.

"How are you feeling?" Frank asks, clumsily but with feeling. After Gerard, Frank had loved Mikey more than anyone else. He was one of the only people that Gerard had ever seen take to Mikey quickly – one of the few people Mikey smiled for.

Gerard realises, now, just how little he's seen of anyone in the last few days. Bob's concerned frown, Frank's fidgeting restlessness. In another moment, without the looming of confrontation over his head, the sight and sound of them might have relaxed him, a little, the way they usually did.

"I'm fine, Frank," he tries, for Frank's sake. He sounds unconvincing to himself.

Frank, though, looks as if he relaxes a fraction, until he remembers himself.

"Then," Frank whispers _loudly_ and Gerard winces, "why are you letting them _both_ in there without me and Bob? Bob and I can come in."

Gerard says nothing, just opens his door wider and gives Bob a significant look. Bob puts hand on Frank's shoulder, and Frank slumps. One of Gerard's favourite things about Bob is the fact that he will obey an order without question, especially if it concerns keeping Frank safe – even, possibly, at Gerard's own expense. He musters a weak smile for Bob and receives a pleading look in return. Bob agrees with Frank, of course.

"No," Gerard says, sighing. "Come in." He gestures Bert and Quinn inside without looking at them.

* * *

In the study, Gerard stands behind his mother's desk, his finger tips pressed against the polished wood. He looks down at the polished top. His dirty nails.

"Tell me again."

"Tell you _what_?" Quinn spits.

"You're not stupid, Quinn."

"It all happened so _fast_." There is a mocking edge to it. A taunt.

Gerard whips his head up, but looks past Quinn, straight at Bert. Bert is chewing on an already bitten fingernail, blank faced. "What have you brought into my hotel, Bert?" Gerard grits his teeth against a yell. "Too crude to be an assassin, maybe just a rabid dog." Gerard can taste acid in the back of his throat, jealous bile rising. Bert has his Quinn, while Gerard has no one, because _Quinn_ still has _Bert_ and Quinn took Mikey.

Still, he thinks, and doesn't like himself for it – weak, pathetic, so _himself_, so emotional, the reactions, the neediness of someone not cut out for this life – he thinks, _say it, Bert, ask me to make you an offer. Tell me you'll put down your rabid dog and sleep in my bed with me every night that I need you to, every night, every fucking night_.

Toro would tell him that expecting loyalty from these people ('these people', as if they were so, so different) was ridiculous in the first place. For all their upbringings might seem similar, Ray never had Mikey.

Bert isn't looking at him.

He won't say it.

Gerard looks at Quinn and thinks of the scorpion and the frog, the snake and the woman.

"You have all the loyalty of a _scorpion_." Gerard jerks backwards at the look on Quinn's face, body language Gerard knows, and Quinn projects his silent, furious, suicidal forward lunge, far, far before he moves, face and muscles twisted up in terrible knots. He looks so tense he's in pain, and Gerard thinks _good_.

Bert says nothing. Gerard is shattered already, and Bert says nothing, and Gerard feels already broken pieces of himself crack and crack for every second Bert takes to make his choice.

"_Snake_." Gerard says, the word slipping out between clenched teeth. He meets Quinn's furious brown eyes and holds them despite the urge to flinch, at the _burning_ there, the silent threat.

Bert, though. Bert still takes that precious second too long to do anything, and by the time Bert yells "_QUINN,_" it's too late for the his name to have any effect except killing that last, stubborn piece of Gerard's hope.

Quinn lunges forward, predator quick and red eyed with rage, and Gerard is half a step from death as his hand reaches for the glass covering his mother's gun, but Bert physically tackles Quinn to the ground, clings to him, envelopes him with his smaller limbs and his greater force of will.

One of Quinn's hands drags across the table; as he's pulled back the gun case is shattered, and the Colt spins across the table in front of Gerard. Quinn's other palm thuds into the mat, and the weapon he's had hidden there tears through the expensive rug, a dent, a ragged rip that should have been in Gerard's chest, or his neck. He snarls like a hungry animal pulled away from a carcass.

Gerard is glad that no one else has seen this. They are alone and it means he can save himself one more pain (by cutting himself faster and deeper, right now) and let them go. Let Bert go. He could – he could calmly walk them outside and let Bob and Frank take Quinn down, shoot him and tear him apart. Gerard thinks, again, of shaking hands with Bert for the first time.

Gerard cannot.

Bert is on his feet, in front of Quinn, his arm stretched out behind him, his hand planted on Quinn's chest, as if the contact is all that's keeping Quinn still. Quinn is shaking.

"Gerard—" Bert starts. He reaches out, maybe unconsciously.

"_PLEASE_ go, Bert. Before you can't walk out of here. _Please._"

Bert was a stillbirth, a partnership lost before it was born, a grief Gerard has no room for, a grief for something he could have loved deeply. How do you grieve something half grown? It's a little death on the graveyard on his life.

"You don't know what the fuck you're _DOING_, Gerard! You have _no idea_. You know Travis McCoy's a cop? You know Saporta's working with the police? You know they're all out there _waiting for you to fuck up_? I'm the only one on your fucking side!"

"Get out." Gerard says, and opens his phone like a threat. He calls Frank.

Bert stamps his foot and turns wordlessly away, angry and hurt. Quinn's hand is bleeding from the glass on the table. He spits on the carpet as he leaves, a curse and a fuck-you.

"Frank. Yes. I'm fine. _Fine_. Escort Bert out of the hotel. All of them. Now."

* * *

Gerard has his feet curled under him in the great leather chair when Ray walks into the study without knocking, stepping gingerly around the broken glass, the tear in the carpet. Impolite, not to knock, no matter how many times Gerard has told him he's always welcome. Ray always knocks. He's off-balance. Gerard leans against the desk, cradling his mother's gun in his hands. His absence has been hard on Ray.

"Hi, Ray. Frank call you?"

Ray raises an eyebrow at him that is in no way deliberate.

"Bob, actually."

Ray is twitchy, then, more ruffled than his tone suggests. Of course, his tone rarely suggests anything but perfect control, even to Gerard, who knows him. Really knows him.

Gerard says nothing, only shifts his tingling feet and waits. Ray tugs at his own cuff, a small, jerky gesture.

"Gerard, you know someone is going to open a door at any moment. _I_ can only hold this together for so long."

There it is. Ray is asking him to come down, again. Gerard knows what he's thinking – that throwing Bert out is the beginning of Gerard's recovery, his return to the business. He is half right.

"Let them." He says and he's surprised to realise just how much he means it, how strongly it comes out.

"You have to get up, Gerard – you have to take responsibility. You are the head of this family now, you have to hold it together."

Gerard cocks his head, but he isn't listening.

"For fuck's sake, you sent them away and didn't call for more security. Gerard. You have to know you cannot be left here alone, at least?"

He registers vaguely Ray's vehement curse. Ray never curses. He is even more angry than he sounds, of course.

"If I could give this to you, I would," he thinks. Says out loud. Ray was raised, groomed, much the same way as Gerard. If Gerard could hand him this haunted empire, he would. Ray is straight-backed, in front of him, he is tall like a statue from where Gerard is sitting: slick haired and wearing, never mind his suit, he is wearing clothing that has probably been laundered some time this week. Ray is angry, he is flustered, he is holding himself together and composed, so someone who hadn't known him since they both played with pretend guns wouldn't even _see_ the little cracks Gerard can barely get his eyes on. Gerard would give it all to him. He can't.

This, this has always been his life. This is what he was meant for. To run this family. To continue the legacy. To do business, to deal in drugs and blood and death. He has never seriously questioned it – he was born to it and even though he could never say he had wanted it, as sure as his name was Way, his life was set out for him.

Now he wonders, why? Mikey's dead and Gerard wonders, _why_? This sadness that's overwhelmed him - it's an inspired sadness, now. The part that lays you in bed and tells you that there's no point in anything, he's feeling that part pass, slide off of him like a shed skin. This disgrace, this disgraceful place, is all his.

"You know, you're right. I have to take responsibility," Gerard says.

Ray's eyes widen, briefly, then his expression settles into a relieved kind of I-told-you-so. His hands drop from his cuffs and hang by his sides.

This sadness is still there, but it's new. This is an inspired sadness. An artist's despair.

Gerard doesn't notice Ray leaving, but he finds himself alone in the centre of the room. He is standing, now, on numb feet. Surrounded by shattered glass and dead eyes.

He's said to Ray it wasn't _time_ yet. Speaking nonsense, half on fire with a fever of grief he is sure is breaking now – or he has, it has peaked and he is hallucinating bravely – he had no idea there was a time coming, then. He had no idea _this_ would be it.

When they (the corpse and the traitor and the lover that are leaving), when they killed Mikey Way, they killed Gerard Way. He realises, now, no matter how hard Ray coaxes, or how much Bert had wanted him, you cannot raise the dead.

The thought is a breath of clean air.

Freeing.

He stands alone in an empty room and he is going to do what so many people here are trying to, with their blood and sweat and knives and lives. He assembles his weapons: a cell phone, a pair of scissors from the desk drawer.

He is going to end this war. He is going to win.

* * *

"Hello, Rise Against Security. You're speaking to Tim." The voice is unfamiliar, practiced and professional with a rough edge that suggests it hasn't always been so professional. An ex-something.

"Hello, Tim," Gerard begins, talking at his reflection in the mirror, doing his best Ray Toro, Businessman impression (still the easiest way he's found of sounding like he has a handle on any situation: copy Ray), "this is Gerard _Way_. I believe you owe us a favour."

T-minus one hour and counting.

Gerard ducks down and opens the cabinet beneath the sink, rifles through until he finds his mother's hair dye. Picks up his scissors.

* * *

* * *

All Travis McCoy wants is to catch bad guys.

Life gets complicated, though, is the problem. From a long-limbed five year old in a tatty old cardboard box marked near-illegibly "POLICE", to a man driving a real, big, black and white car marked very obviously the same, to a man staring down thirty and rubbing shoulders with the guys he'd imagined catching, that he'd caught, and would _have_ to catch this time if he ever wanted to see the inside of his big shiny car again. Com-pli-cated. Travis dislikes complicated.

He's not complicated, is the thing. He still basically just wants to catch the bad guys, cardboard, metal or no car at all. Life's what gets complicated.

When you're five years old, you don't think in shades of grey. Bad guys are Bad. Good guys are Good. Bad guys lose. Good guys win.

When Travis is twenty, he still hasn't learnt how much grey there is in the world, in the system. He thinks maybe the fact that every prison, lock up, police station's insides are slathered in soft grey paint, should maybe have been a hint.

Eventually, he learns sometimes good guys can be bad and bad guys can be good and no one at all is ever one or the other.

Not even himself.

He takes a draw on the thickly rolled blunt, clasped comfortably between his thumb and index finger.

You get caught with your hand in the cookie jar once too often (or in the giant silvery air-tight bags of confiscated pot in the drug lockers, or in someone else's green lined palm, or, or. Travis knew better cops who did worse. He still just wanted to catch the _real_ bad guys, is all, and he thinks that should have counted for something), you'll get your fingers slapped and your ass kicked over to the side of the fence marked "suspended without pay pending further review". He may lose (_has lost_) his job, and his job is all he's ever wanted and all he's ever been. He is a cop. What is he when he's not a cop? He's not high enough to contemplate the philosophical nuances of that motherfucker of a question. He may never be.

If he can pull this off (they have wanted the Ways for longer than Travis has been _alive_), they will take him back. They may even promote him.

The thought of what's going to happen if he doesn't pull this off reinforces his courage against any attacks of doubt. He walked into this gothic labyrinth he's now sitting on top of like Theseus, his ball of string provided by Disashi in handily hidden, wireless forms. His recorders, his cell phone, his guns. The bulk of his ball of string is in the tiny, easily hidden surveillance mics, and he counts on finding his way back out of here on the back of hours of bugged recordings and Gabriel Saporta's loaded god-complex, his manifold ambitions.

Theseus.

He feels, for a second, like he's made an unlucky comparison. Could be worse. At least he's not Icarus, blinded by the sun, crashing down on melting wings. He ducks his head so the sunlight reflecting from the vent in front of him isn't in his eyes. It's a shitty comparison anyway, he's more like some poor, talentless dumbfuck who's made a deal with the devil on a crossroads at midnight: give me the one thing I'm truly good at. More like it, more ambiguous, more grey.

Heroes don't get fired for being on the take.

Travis kicks his sole against the metal vent, banging it once before thinking better of it. He's alone up here and that's just fine, doesn't particularly want the company of a badly camouflaged psychopath or three, looking for the noise maker and licking their lips for blood. He bends his neck, squints his eyes against the vent reflecting the sun. He'd be uncomfortable if he wasn't high enough to be half asleep. It _should_ dangerous and uncomfortable, his ass on concrete, his back curved like a c so his head doesn't show over the lip of the roof. As it is, hazy-headed and squinting happily enough, it's only the former. He shifts a little and his hair brushes the butt of his Remington 700 rifle. It's not what he's used to, this is an army model, longer range than the usual police gear, but he can take it apart and he can put it together, and it makes no difference at all if he can hit a target with it.

He's meant to be on sniper watch. There are one or two others here who could do this job, Stump is good at weapons, Allman apparently a crack shot, if anyone could get close enough to the dead-smelling psych – or would want to, Travis would rather never have to smell burning flesh fighting with unwashed insanity again – to teach him the tech. Travis, though, is a fully qualified sniper (true) and assassin for hire (false), and this is his own little in.

So he sits on the dirty roof and takes in the scenery, his back to what he's supposed to be watching, his head in clouds of green, fluffier and more comfortable than it's been in days. It's less oppressive up here, not surrounded by criminals and psychopaths and gothic decor and not enough light. Sitting on top, in natural light, Travis feels like he's come up for a gasping breath of air, albeit a smoky one. He knows he's going to be ducked back under far too soon, so he's making the most of it.

Midday sun lays the alleyway squalor of the roof bare. Cleaners don't come up here. Not the legally employed kind who clean baths _or_ the kind who use baths to clean up dirtier things. The roof looks like the scene of a particularly brutal sex crime. The sunlight recalls the kind of evidence-bright lighting that takes away any of the curious dread or fear the place should have hold, even with the gargoyles perched on the building's corners, even with the things Travis knows happened here, with the things he _doesn't_. Like a mugshot of an old hooker, a tired crack addict, it should be horrifying or shocking, but under lights it leaves nothing but an empty, queasy feeling in the pit of your stomach.

That could just be the munchies, though.

Travis rubs his stomach in tingling circles through his shirt. His shift isn't over. He should be making a point of looking busy, eye in his gun sight for intruders and other snipers he might see and would never actually shoot. He's caught the glint of lenses in the buildings opposite, once or twice in the last few days. He knows the one or two badly concealed people he's caught mean there's double or triple watching. Some of them are probably police – the Ways are always watched, and Disashi has been dropping hints enough for him to at least _hope_ his people have stepped up the surveillance.

So he sights people and he ignores them all and feels that weird little gut twist of guilt that comes with undercover work for him. He doesn't really enjoy being dishonest. He's a good liar, but a queasy one.

Again, though, that could just be the munchies. He bangs his head back against the concrete once, twice, cushioned by his hair and not hard enough to hurt anyway, chokes on his own slow stoned laughter and slumps over sideways some more. His hand lands on something plastic-feeling and he snatches it back and laughs harder when he should probably be _gagging_ because stuck to his palm is a shrivelled, used condom (he's laughing, maybe, because it's not the worst thing he's touched since he's been here). He shakes his hand until it flies off and flops down in the sunlight. Sex crime chic. Alongside the broken glass, beer bottles and blood stains.

The blood, of course, is Mikey Way's.

Travis frowns at the bloodstains and shuffles himself around until he's straighter. His experience only takes him as far as telling him what he already knows. Three men. One shot. One cut. Two dead. One alive to lie about the tale.

Mikey Way's bloodstain is sun-parched brown and cracked with sneaker prints, contaminated beyond hope, but still there. There are several cigarette butts dotting the patch, like they've been flicked there on purpose. No time to hose down, no point, it's as well hidden up here in the open air as it would be downstairs where the fights are held.

Travis can hear the vehement cursing of a thousand forensic officers, looking at this mess. Travis can also hear the cheerful joking of fellow detectives, looking at the bloodstain and thinking, _good_, celebrating the way they'd celebrated Donna Way's death. Without knowing half as much as what they think they do. Without knowing half of what Travis now knows about Mikey Way.

He'll maybe find out _exactly_ what happened to the littlest Way, later. He picks a thumbprint-sized black dot off the underside of the lip of the roof's wall and flips it like a coin, before slipping it in his pocket. He's got ears everywhere. He's not exactly going to rush into that, though. Priorities. That, and Mikey Way's death saved a lot more lives than it destroyed.

Gerard Way, Travis thinks, is an acceptable casualty. He rubs his eyes, hard, they're redder again than simple, tired, stoned. He doesn't enjoy the thought, it eats at his high and spits little wads of sadness and fearful paranoia (it's not paranoia, he reminds himself, if they really are out to get you). He doesn't enjoy that what he's doing now means the phrase "acceptable casualty" has entered his vocabulary at all. He particularly hates the rational part of his mind, the one that says the little bit of him that doesn't enjoy that phrase is yet another acceptable casualty.

Way the elder is locked away in his room, now, apparently quietly falling apart while everything around him crashes down loud and obvious as a thunderstorm.

It suits Travis, though, for him to stay blind and deaf in grief or insanity. It probably suits a lot of people. Saporta comes to mind. Travis curls his lip and flicks the roach away from himself with practiced ease.

Travis is waiting on two things.

Gabriel Saporta and Gabriel Saporta's massive ego. He is jerking Travis around, at this point, when literally all Travis needs now is Gabe's _yes_ and signed promise of testimony. It's a dangerous game Saporta's playing. Dangerous for both of them. Travis has swung introductions with William Beckett and _Brian fucking Schechter_, and that should be enough. He's has refused to pay indemnity, not only on principal, but because he _can't_ at this point. He has no agency to back his finances, he is all but out-on-his-ass _fired_, all he has is friends and hope and the fact that no one's signed the little slip of paper that means Travis's life is essentially over. If Saporta finds that out ...

Well. The sooner they shake hands and seal the practically-done deal, the sooner they can both get out of here. Saporta's already lost a Cobra, though, and that's almost enough to make Travis swerve first, here, seeing how far Saporta's willing to go (or stay, as it is) to push this deal. What Saporta doesn't know is that Travis has nothing left to lose.

Travis picks a flake of weed off the inside of his lip, and tongues a stress ulcer along his bottom lip.

He was trying to take this too short time in the open air to try _not_ to think about his little deal with Mr. Gabriel "Iscariot" Saporta. Waiting means his mind jumps all over the place and he can't afford to get jittery, paranoid, sloppy. Not now. He wishes Saporta was the hell out of his head. Travis rubs his face on his knees.

Condom wrappers glint like giant, sparse confetti. Travis might be the one of the only people here who isn't just hanging around to stick his dick or a knife in someone. Though they're all here to fuck people. Travis's way, and his reasons, are just unique. They make sense.

Also.

Everyone here is a midget.

He is used to being the tallest in the room almost everywhere, but this is ridiculous. There are people half his size here he's fairly sure could turn him inside out, grab his intestines and wind his guts around him skipping and laughing, like ribbons around a maypole. Maybe, he thinks, this is why he'd ended up hand in fucking ... fang with Saporta (there he is again, of course. Travis sighs). They are least literally seeing eye-to-eye. Though definitely not morally, and Travis is, actually, sane. Still. He's also used to being the most tattooed dude in a room, but that's a whole other freakshow. His point is, this hotel is full of horny angry midgets.

Horny angry fucking midgets.

He laugh-coughs smoke signals of amusement puffing out of his mouth and into the crystal clear, fragile stillness.

Checks the Rolex his Dad had bought him at graduation, the watch he'd had three "nice fake" comments on and one raised eyebrow of recognition from Toro about (assassination occasionally paid well, Travis silently thanked his cover and Disashi for helping him learn his shit). Ten minutes, then he's back downstairs. Back underwater. Holding his breath again, for as long as he can. Travis wants out. He's done his job, he's done his _best_ and now he's waiting. He's waiting on Saporta.

* * *

Travis is still well away from one of the roof's exits when the door swings open, a shape emerging like a sideways meerkat peering around the door. Travis stops, blinks. It's followed by two explanatory shapes, Victoria Asher and Alex Suarez. Not a meerkat, then, but a baseball bat.

Victoria "Vicky-T" Asher smiles at him, her palms over the handle of her bat. Shiny black nails tap at the well-loved wood. There are stains on that thing that Travis is shudderingly sure represent individual souls. There's a bandage around her upper arm, scabs on her thighs from the fight, but she looks good. Horribly good. She steps up and puts her other hand against his chest, lightly. He thinks for a second she's like a builder checking a wall for beams and weaknesses, tapping away for the weak spot to break through first.

He takes her fingers gently in his hand, doesn't want to start a fight, doesn't want to spook her, but god if he wants her to be just a little further away. He drops her hand as he takes a step back.

Her mask of flirtatious harmlessness doesn't drop. It's the simplest kind of mask, the kind that's mostly the truth. She's hiding in plain sight, her smile is the truth and her flirting is probably real, though if they were ever alone he's sure she'd rather kill him than fuck him.

He looks her up and down. Her legs are thin in her socks, her muscles stand out. Like a hungry predator.

"Try me again if you ever put on a couple of pounds," he says and makes a coke-bottle gesture, generous tits and hips and thighs. It's half truth, half serious self preservation.

"You're no fun at all," she replies. She makes it sound like a threat.

"What the fuck do you expect from a pig? Hijo de tu puta madre," Alex Suarez (assault and battery, possession with intent to sell, several short prison sentences and a foul mouth) says. He spits the Spanish curse and Travis wonders if he actually thinks Travis doesn't understand, or that he even needs to, given the pure acid of his tone.

Vicky-T laughs.

"Maybe I can make him squeal," she sing-songs prettily.

Suarez rolls his eyes.

Travis feels queasy again. He wishes it were the munchies. Victoria "Vicky-T" Asher: there's a record and a history of being institutionalized for being _batshit meth-fucked insane_ (Travis has seen in person the kind of drug psychosis described in her files, it's not pretty), but what Travis's mind supplies most strongly, in the face of her close-lipped sweet smile, is this: Michael Foster, age 32, deceased. He is now a corpse covered in a full body bruise. A man-size, man-shape blood blister, flesh torn from muscle, bled through to fill the spaces, bones and organs awkwardly bunched in the pulpy blood under his thin skin. There is a dent where his ribs should be on his right side. They punctured his lung. Suffocation was not what killed him, only what killed him quickest. One hand is curled like a poisoned rat that died in pain.

His fatal mistake was employing Vicky-T. Giving her a chance. Just another bit of evidence that'll be burned eventually, when this deal with Gabe goes down. Another little queasy twist of guilt Travis will have to get over. Will get over, he's sure (and not guiltlessly) he will.

"As _fun_ as this has been," Suarez says though a deeply sarcastic smile, "we're only here to tell you McCracken's people have just gone," and he sounds so fucking happy about it, "and the rats are always first off when the ship is sinking. Gabe wants to see you. Now," Suarez says. He turns on his heel sharply and lets the door slam shut behind himself, leaving Travis with Vicky-T.

"I've got to finish this shift," Travis says. Cautious. He has to be consistent, more cautious now than ever. Running out before the end of a shift could garner Toro's attention and the last thing he wants is the only sane pair of eyes in the hotel who're probably still looking out for Gerard Way right on his back. He is so close now he can taste it. Hours. Minutes.

"See you soon," Vicky-T says. Winks at him.

He gives her a slow salute and breathes out heavily, relieved when she finally goes. He grabs his cell phone out of his pocket. He feels calmer the second Disashi picks up.

"Now?" Disashi asks, doesn't bother with hello, and Travis smiles.

"Aw, worried about me, Dis?"

"Fuck you, Travis. I'm worried about _me_. The longer you're in there, the more weird-ass phone calls I have to explain."

"Okay, okay," Travis fights to keep the semi-stoned, semi-hysterical laugh out of his voice. He's missed Dis's terrifyingly bad fake pissed-off, the normality of talking to him, and he's missed his sane voice. He's missed _sane_ in general so much it makes him giddy just to hear Disashi's concerned scolding, every time he gets to (briefly) talk to him.

"Seriously, fuck you," Disashi says.

"Seriously, seriously," Travis replies trying to tamp down on his relieved laughter. "I think Saporta's ready, I think this is it. How long before I can get out, when I call you?"

"Today, Travis?"

"Today."

"Travie."

"Dis."

"Your head clear?"

"Haven't so much as inhaled the morning smog," Travis says. What's a well-loved lie between friends?

Disashi laughs, his deep chuckle tinny though the phone. "I'll make the call now. You know what that means. When you're ready, buzz me again. You _know_ it'll be ten minutes, tops, and that hotel will be crawling with S.W.A.T."

"This'll work," Travis says. He takes a deep, deep breath and holds it.

"This'll work," Disashi replies.

He wishes Disashi was here. His partner has all the timing, the practicality, the logic, while Travis got stuck with the ideas, the stupid plans, with his head in the clouds while Disashi held his ankles and kept his own feet firmly on the ground. Wishing him here though, that'd be wishing him suspended and hanging on the same precarious hook as Travis, every kind of beast snapping at his toes. But worst of all, the fall he takes if he fucks this up is into _nothing_. No job, no life. Nothing.

He shoves his cell phone in his pocket and gets off the roof.

* * *

He detours to his room and stuff his gear into his black rifle bag, everything fits around the broken-down parts of the Remington, so it looks, maybe, like he's just taking his weapon downstairs to clean it off. Hours of logs and little technological wonders and everything Travis brought in is in there, though. So he won't need to come back up six floors when this all goes down.

His badge is in his pocket and the thought of it there is simultaneously comforting and uncomfortable. Travis coasts through stuffy, breathless darkness of the hotel. Day or night or day or night, Travis knows he was just outside in the midday sun and he's already unsure if he imagined that. Inside the hotel it's timelessly twilight. The dark carpet and walls don't help.

He walks slow as he can make himself. There is no guarantee that Saporta's not fucking with his head and he tries to force himself to remember that. He hears voices echoing through the empty hallways and pauses.

"_Let_ me win?"

"Let you _win_, shortpants."

"You've gone insane, Brunhilda."

"Everyone knows Jepha rolls over for any guy who'll smack him around a little,"

"_Jepha_? _Everyone_ knows? Fuck you anyway, if you've got some retarded crush on the dirty fucker, his tattoos suck and it still doesn't mean he _let_ me win."

"You should have seen it from my angle – he had a semi the whole time, so he was basically suffering brain damage before you even threw a punch."

"I'll give you brain damage, _Bob_."

"The only thing you're giving me is a semi, _Frank_."

Secret, low, conspiratorial, laughing argument carried out in whisper-talk; Travis lets his back hit the wall, quickly and as comfortably casual looking as he can, in case there's anyone else coming. In case he'll hear something interesting. He also wants this over with so badly he's having trouble thinking straight, but he paces himself. This could be important.

He also feels some twinge, a catch in the fabric of his pride he knows is ridiculous, at the thought of rushing to answer Saporta's call. If there was some way to have made a deal with that devil without ever having to be in the same room as him, Travis would have sold his damn soul for it.

There's thumping sounds and Iero's cracked giggle coming around the corner now. If Travis wants to get past without any nudity, he's thinking he'd better move now. He's not going to find out anything here except what it sounds like when Bryar and Iero fuck.

Something about the siege conditions, the atmosphere's tense electric air, brings out not only shorter fuses and the black eyes and bloody lips that come with them, but desperate groping, the confetti condom wrappers and broken glass reckless on the rooftop. Maybe it's just that it makes everyone more desperate for contact. Any kind of contact. When the action keeps threatening to come and never quite getting here, people make their own action. Break the tension before it breaks them.

Travis steps into the hallway and into his mask. Pulls on a criminal on top of his cop on top of his criminal on top of his kid in a brown cardboard box with the flashlight sirens and shaky letters.

His walk slows to a stroll, his lips lag to a drawl, his eyes lid to harmless stoner, shoulders curl down as his mouth curls up, like a ship flagging with every single part of him, harmless, pay no attention to the tall man in the corner. The trick to this particular Travis McCoy, he's realised, is to behave as if he's constantly, comfortably stoned. The level where everything feels better than it should and you're not afraid of anything, especially not the things you should be.

Especially not the very worst things, instead they'll make you smile or laugh. A little dumb. It's not hard to fake either, half the time he is stoned, trying to keep himself sane, and what he's doing has been described as painfully stupid, in half awed tones by Disashi at least. If he comes across as trying to hide something behind his excessively laconic exterior, he's still only fitting in. Everyone's hiding something under something here.

This hotel is full of werewolves. Pretty on the outside, bestial and yellow eyed inside. Travis is kind of like an inside out werewolf, he thinks, smoky thoughts lingering pot-profound haze. All his most prickly, stinking parts as close to the surface as he can push them, all his best, most honourable parts hidden away until the next full moon. Soon.

Iero's back slides down the wall and his feet hit the carpet silently as Bryar releases him. They turn and face Travis in stereo, the kind of tuned-in you get in long term partners, five-ten-twenty year guys, cops or robbers. Beefy, blonde and beardy, Bryar looks pissed off: at the interruption, just because Travis exists? It's hard to tell. Travis finds he looks pissed off a lot.

Travis likes to play a little game he calls Rapsheet Roulette. Or Bad Guy Bingo. They're both pretty catchy, he hasn't decided yet. It means Travis feels as if he's known half the people in this hotel for years, which had actually fucked with his perception on meeting some of them.

Bob Bryar, for instance, goes something like: drink driving, several dropped assault charges, a couple of overnight stays for brawling, wanted currently in connection to an open murder case. Bryar's record makes sense.

Frank Iero's record is the carefully careless, surprisingly, impossibly clean, and carefully watched, record of a known and long time Way associate. And the aforementioned Jepharee Howard goes: assault, possession, soliciting, soliciting, soliciting, some things that are only crimes in the more backward states, more soliciting.

It passes time, and the knowing feeling it gives him helps with his mask, with his little stoner Zen smile. The tiny little I-know-something-you-don't-know is a silent fuck-you that helps keep jitters and out loud, death wish fuck-yous in check.

"The fuck are you doing, McCoy?"

Travis smiles dumbly, numbly, and says, "I hear you got cobras in your basement, Iero." He's saying something and nothing all at once, words but no communication, which is how he likes to keep it when he's speaking to these people.

He speaks at Iero because Bryar may or may not answer questions apparently at random, whereas Iero's always got something to say and you're likely to hear it whether you're asking him or not.

"What, you going down there for some pest control? As much as I'd like to, we can't let you do that." Iero thinks he's very funny.

Travis smiles again, another acceptable non-answer. They have no idea this is all about to come crashing down around their heads.

"Whatever, you going this way?" Iero points in the direction of the elevators, still a fairly long walk through many cornered corridors. This place is gargantuan.

"Yep," Travis says, easily. The elevators are less creepy than the twisting stairwells where you can't see more than three feet in front of you at any time, where you've got no easy line of site on potential threats. At least in the hall-of-mirrors creepy elevators you'll see whatever's coming.

"You hear Saporta took off two of Hurley's fingers?" Iero asks, tilting his head back on his neck to direct the question half at Travis.

"No shit, important ones?" Travis asks, full of stoner Zen, vaguely interested sounding. He's interested, alright. He'd have thought Saporta could keep it in his pants, at least until he got Hurley for real. Saporta better be calling him down there to do this deal so they can back the truck the fuck out of here, or his star witness is going to end up _dead_. God-complex does not mean a godlike ability to survive a knife in the back.

"Aren't they all pretty fuckin' important?" Bryar asks, and Travis can hear the frown in his voice. He watches Bryar's fists clench and release at his sides, fight scarred and knobbly knuckled. To someone who lives by his fists, Travis supposes, the thought is pretty terrifying. Not that it thrills Travis, either.

Iero laughs, and Travis nearly walks straight into his back before he realises they've stopped. Standing in front of the polished grey steal of the elevator doors are Stump and Wentz.

"Depends," Wentz says, "not everyone jerks off as much as you, Iero." He's smoothing his own hair and sneering unpleasantly.

Travis doesn't let out the exasperated sigh that's trying to fight its way out of his chest, he just takes one slow, long step backwards, putting as much room between himself and them as subtly as possible.

"Fuck you, Wentz," Iero says, and Travis takes another step and puts his back against the wall. He can't see Iero's expression, but his cheeks are red.

"Nah, I already had your mom last night and it still burns when I pee." Wentz grins that huge-toothed smartass smirk of his.

"Enjoy seeing the Cobras?" Iero snaps back. Wentz's grin leaves his face like the world's fastest mood swing.

"What?"

"I should," Travis starts. Bryar reaches an arm out, palm open facing Travis. Don't move. He didn't think he'd actually get past that easy anyway, but it was worth a try to escape whatever little pissing contest is happening here, and any splashback he might incur.

Travis, true to his mask and deeply at odds with what his feet and his training are telling him to do, doesn't move and doesn't speak.

"Too bad he didn't take _your_ fingers this time. Or your fucking head."

"Nope, still got those," Wentz presents his middle fingers. "So you sent us down there on purpose, Iero? Really?" He sounds dangerously pleased.

"How's Hurley doing anyway? Still hold a knife okay?" Iero asks. The wrong answer, but answer enough.

"Better than Mikey Way can," Wentz says.

Travis has already been here long enough to have been made guiltily guiltless and strangely, uncomfortably desensitized about fights. He's seen Iero fight in the extremely illegal downstairs arena, and he's cheered, conforming strangely easily, in _some_ ways, to this insulated society of violence.

He hesitates, now, too slow to reach the right reaction, somewhere under his thick cover where bloody, terrible fights are entertainment. It becomes apparent really quickly that this is _not_ entertainment, this is not a game, not even the serious kind he's playing.

Teeth bared like dogs, there is no polite raising of fists, no handshake, no more taunts, not even an polite, but ineffectual referee. They fly at each other, two fluke shots that collide midair.

There are brass knuckles on Wentz's fists, in Iero's face, and Iero's head snaps back. It's got to hurt, Travis thinks, though he thinks maybe Wentz's metal-looped fingers have only torn across Iero's face. Iero's brow splits open and the blood is still in the air when he whips his head forward without a pause and his forehead connects with Wentz's nose, and there's an audible, ominous _crunch_.

Travis is trained at hand-to-hand. Knows his way around a nightstick. Can knock a target dead on centre at 800 meters with a sniper rifle, though he's never fired at a human being. He's been trained, mostly, in ways to hurt without killing. You never hit the head, spine, sternum, groin. If you're using your nightstick, you aim for arms, legs, disable mostly harmlessly at the backs of knees. The worst Travis has ever done to someone is accidentally-on-purpose dislocate their shoulder, arm up behind the perp's back. No lasting damage at all. Easily dismissed. Deserved. Reasonable.

Blood spatters the wall. Travis can't tell whose. Blood trickles a little way down the dark paint before running itself out, too thick and sticky. There's an explosion of breath, and a gob of pink tinged phlegm hits the wall as they both gain their feet.

"My fucking _nose_," Wentz says and holding his face, squeezing out more blood that drip-drops from his nostrils and trails over the back of his tanned hand.

"You're an ugly motherfucker anyway, Wentz." Iero wipes blood out of his eye with tattooed fingers.

Wentz point wet fingers at Iero, blood drips from the end. He says nothing. Smiles. His teeth are pink.

Iero glances back at Bryar, Travis notes his questioning look, the twitch of his bleeding eyebrow and thinks _no_ very loudly. Bryar says nothing, but Iero apparently gets what he needs from the silent stare.

Fuck, Travis thinks, he's going to have to step in. They need Iero and Wentz would be fucking excellent to have too, since he's already lost Hurley to Saporta.

In the seconds, the tiny seconds between Iero's glance backwards and Travis thinking this, Wentz, who apparently had no such urge to check with his partner (Stump is looking somewhat regretfully towards Bryar, and when he glances at Wentz his face is blank), has kicked out at Iero's knees and grabbed his shirt at the same time, rolling them both to the floor and landing on top. He slams his metal-shackled fist into Iero's face, a ladder of tiny red fish mouth cuts open up, gasping wet dribbly breathes. Iero's ear starts to bleed, Travis notes with a wince.

Iero and Wentz grope, tear and kick at kidneys, necks, faces, eyes, hard stomachs. Everywhere Travis was trained never to hit, ever, ever.

Travis glances at Bryar's face and gets nothing but a frown that seem too slight. Too unconcerned. He glances at Stump and gets much of the same. Neither of them deepen their expression, but Stump's hands, Travis notes, are behind his back, and the line of his bare forearms tenses and untenses and tenses again. Travis doesn't want to step in, but he may have to, and now he's unsure if he can without catching a knife in the back.

On the floor, Iero gathers a mouthful of blood and spits red and foamy into Wentz's face. Slick, scrabbling fingers tear at Wentz's slippery cheek and find his eye-socket, pushing, pushing. Wentz makes a noise that makes the hair on Travis's neck stand up, an involuntary, animalistic noise. It's _fight_ vocalised. Wentz rolls off, finally, but instead of scrambling away, Iero follows, elbows in ribs and knees and bruising blows, calculated fast and furious and vicious as possible.

Travis's eyes go straight to Stump, a hunch, an instinct. Wentz isn't on top anymore, and Stump's hands aren't behind his back anymore, and the glint of steel drives Travis as if it's at his own throat. He throws himself towards Iero and hauls him off with an adrenaline-forced strength, pulls him back, sees Iero's blunt fingernail leave bleeding tracks in Wentz's arm, pulls until Iero comes free, like a pitbull from the neck of another dog. Travis's arms shake with the strain. Wentz is dazed enough to let go more easily, though, but he whines, growls. There's no match day showmanship or grace in this, they grunt and pant like he's denying two damp lovers their breathless bloody orgasm.

Stump's hands are empty of steel and full of an angrily vibrating, tense Wentz, who is more easily restrained than Iero, apparently, Stump having only an arm around Wentz's shoulders, his neck, from behind. His lips at Wentz's ear. Travis gets only a second to look though. He finds himself with his arms locked around the waist of a spitting, scratching whirlwind. Iero's heavier than he looks, too. Travis uses the forward momentum of Iero throwing himself towards Wentz again to spin them around and pin Iero.

Travis breathes for a second. Blinks, and feels as if he's lost a second in time. Finds he's got Iero's face pressed hard against the wall, one of his arms wretched up hard behind his back, Travis is half a second away from groping on his belt for his fucking _handcuffs_.

The silence makes itself known suddenly, and to Travis's intense discomfort, he feels as if all eyes are on him.

Something cold is pressing into Travis's lower back and he thinks, _gun_, and freezes exactly as he is. Hoping. Bryar's voice comes far too close to his ear and Travis feels his entire body shiver cold, from the point of steel in his back radiating outwards to his limbs, drawing goosebumps along the way.

"Let him go," Bryar says.

That cold second in the dark, stifling hallway, Travis feels as if someone's walked over his grave.

He slowly wills his frozen fingers away from Iero's still wrist. Lets him go. Bryar takes the gun away from his spine.

The elevator pings, normal and cheerful into the silence.

Travis picks up his bag and holds his empty hand up in placid surrender.

"Sorry, man," he says.

"Fucking move," Bryar snaps. Travis does as he's told. Bryar steps around him and gets his hands on Iero's face, wiping blood away from the side of his face that Wentz had torn open so many times. Travis takes a quick step backwards. Glances over his shoulder at the elevator, the doors already sliding closed on Wentz and Stump, still pressed hard against each other, in comfort, or Stump holding Wentz up, or still holding him back, Travis has no idea. His heart is still beating adrenaline quick.

He's dodged a bullet and now, now he wants to get in the elevator and get downstairs and have Saporta not jerk him around, and get the fuck _out_ of here while he's still riding his amazing fucking luck.

He clenches his hand around the handles of his bag and shoves his shaky free hand between the closing silver doors.

* * *

Inside the mirrored box, Travis attempts to be invisible while thousands of himself slump their shoulders and try too hard to look calm as they spiral off into the mirror-dark behind, in front, all around. He looks up at the ceiling and still sees his face reflected back at him. His eyes are still a little bloodshot, his hair halos out around his head in smoke tainted curls.

Travis pokes the elevator button too many times, too fast. Tell himself, his heart, to slow down.

Wentz and Stump, he can't help notice (all infinity of them), are both still tight-lipped.

The elevator is silent, other than Wentz's overly loud breathing. Travis is grateful it's covering his own, but it is not _calming_. He wasn't sure there could be anything worse than elevator music, until now.

Stump glances at Travis out of the corner of his eye, and Travis sees it, though he's obviously not meant to, looking forward and trying to relax himself, trying to pull his mask back on like a pair of soaking wet jeans, uncooperative. His hands are still jittery. He would dearly like to shout something into the little box, to yell out some of the adrenaline and the joy that he's alive he gets after every close shave. He slumps his shoulders, pulls in on himself harder, smaller, more outwardly contained.

"Where you heading, McCoy?" Wentz asks, smiling what might have been a charming smile before Iero busted his nose hard enough he looks like he's wearing a fake one, and maybe if his chin wasn't streaked with blood, like a cat that's been eating bird guts. It might have been, but Travis recalls his taunting smirk, and realises that it wouldn't have been anything but irritating.  
"Downstairs."

"Watch out for snakes," Wentz says. There's something knowing in his tone, but Travis has no idea if it's because Wentz knows something, thinks he knows something, or is just fishing in case there's something to know. Travis is tired of masks and bullshit.

"Will do." Travis forces himself to smile, just a little. If Wentz knows about his alliance with Saporta … well, unless he plans to fuck Travis over in the next twenty minutes or so, it won't even matter. And fuck – _alliance_ with Saporta? Fuck, deal, _maybe_, they're hardly allies, no one is an ally here, especially not to him. In thinking that, he knows Saporta's just that little bit too deep in his head. It makes him feel dirty. Dirtier. First thing he's doing when he gets out of here is taking a long, long bath and soaking off every bit of metaphorical grit with some extremely literal bubbles.

Wentz and Stump exchange a look, Wentz blinks hard, winces, and in the mirror, Travis catches Stump prodding Wentz in his side, hard. Stump's mouth twitches up at the corners.

"You're a fuckhead," Stump says, quietly. Not sounding very much like he means it.

"He--" Wentz starts, then pauses, snorting and snuffling and wincing as he pulls air in through his red and probably broken nose, and hacking up a ball of phlegm and blood, which he spits on the floor. Travis shifts his feet to avoid his sneakers getting gobbed on. "He deserved it. You have to admit, Patrick, his _face_ was hilarious--"

"I don't have to admit any fucking thing, _Pete_." Though the upward tilt of his lips is as obvious as admitting he was pretty damn amused. "I apparently have to _babysit you_," now his attempted frown morphs into something slightly more real. "Then I have to collect Andy and _find Joe_ –" Stump clamps his teeth hard against the apparently involuntary torrent of pissy near-whispering, his face a little pink tinged. Embarrassed at his outburst, at nearly saying something he obviously doesn't want Travis to hear?

Joe. Travis is long past the point of needing to pump the littlest stoner for info (and peanut butter cups and head rubs and bloodshot sweet-toothed smiles rubbed against his jeans).The fact that eavesdropping and Saporta are now his main source of in house information that doesn't come from mind-numbing, rarely fruitful hours of voice recording, is actually something that he's let slip, a little.

He's been avoiding Joe, but it occurs to him now that it looks like Joe's been avoiding him right back. Almost like he's disappeared. It takes a second for the thought to register properly; he hopes it wasn't the permanent kind of disappeared. There are people who deserved the permanent kind far more than Joe and his dopamine-driven dumbassing around. The thing about Joe is, is Travis knows, that Joe's a nice guy. Comparatively. You have people here who are irrevocably ruined, like Quinn Allman, whose record is longer than Travis arm, and Travis has long fucking arms, or people like the littlest Way, who has no record, but who Travis had seen enough of to know.

Like Saporta, who Travis would argue is the worst, for seeming so convincingly _sane_, for being such a contained, easy-to-get-along-with psychopath.

Joe Trohman, even in comparison to his own gang. Wentz is a bottle of pills and bruises with the cap not quite on right, Stump looks like he should be hanging out in a comic book store but carries more knives than an alleyway fight, and photographs of Hurley's work have literally been used to make newbies on the mob squad puke.

Mr. Joseph Trohman is one of the only people here with an undoctored record that contains not one single violent crime. It's all minor offenses, his biggest crime grand theft auto, and one or two itty bitty possession charges, the likes of which Travis has avoided more times than Joe's ever been caught, simply by knowing who he knows, by being who he is. Who he will _keep on being_ when he signs the deal with Saporta.

The elevator pings and Wentz and Stump file out, presumably to find JoeTroh and their knife man.

The door slides shut and Travis lets out an explosive sigh. Bounces on his toes. He's feeling generous. He thinks he'll try and get Joe a deal, a _good_ deal, when he sees Dis next. _Sees_ him. Face to face.

* * *

Travis is still jittery, adrenaline and tetrahydracannibanol both bouncing around his system fast enough he's nearly vibrating, fuck, he's doing this, this is about to _go down_, he's going to bring this down around their heads, he's going to. Saporta better not fuck around here. Dis has people on standby. They are ready. The fight adrenaline is fading, slowly, but every calm space it should be leaving is being filled up with anticipation.

He feels like boxing his reflections, the combination of rising from what he was sure was going to be a shallow grave a minute ago, Bryar's gun blowing through his spine, his body eventually dissolved in one of those shudder-inducing bathtubs by psycho-boy Quinn, his knees pretzeled around his ears (fuck he hates bathtubs, they're never big enough. But he supposes it would hardly have mattered to his dead-ass self) and the jittery come-down of the aftermath of a fight. He's got to slow himself down because he's so close to being out of here he can taste it and it's making him move too fast. His mask is slipping too early.

The thought of that bathtub is enough he feels like he can smell the burning of chemically melting flesh, and wishes for that little detail to be repressed already.

The elevator dings on the ground floor.

Fuck it. He is too fast and too pretty and he is in control here, he is going to bring this down around their ears. He throws off his laconic stoner walk and let himself stand full height and shoulders back, a posture befitting a police officer, and will never admit to anyone how close he comes to running down the damn hallway, swinging his gun bag like it's a basket of goodies for grandma. _Catch me if you can_, he thinks, _catch me if you can_.

He steps in the blood before he sees it.

He trips slippery and flails his arms, lands his palm smack against the wall. He stands up straight and looks at his hand. Sticky red. He feels his eyes widen as they travel along the floor, the bloody drag mark of a body too hurt to walk, but still desperate to move.

Joe looks up at him, his back propped awkwardly against the wall, big wet eyes and wet red belly wound with one hand pressed chalk white and deadly red against it. Hard. His face is like a porcelain doll, china pale.

Travis falls on his knees and feels warm blood soak into his jeans, he takes away Joe's far too easily moved hand and presses his own hands to the wound like a faith healer, hard and hopeful.

_No._

Joe's mouth moves for a second and he lets out a pained hiss of breath that sounds like _fuck_.

"It's going to be okay, all right? You're going to be fine. This kind of gut shot is painful, I know, but you've got a chance," Travis spouts meaningless statements meant to calm a victim at the scene. Just keep them calm. It's important. Joe's lips move and he leans closer.

"I know you," Joe says. His breath is warm, peanut butter and smoke and blood. Travis's heart constricts. More blood loss than he'd thought, or just more than he wanted to see? It makes no _sense_.

"Yeah, you know me, I scratched your head, remember?" Travis has no idea what the fuck to do here.

"No, fuck, yeah." Joe smiles sweetly through the pain, the smile of someone who's already given up, and it's a terrible, horrible thing to see. Travis wishes he didn't.

"Who did this?" Travis asks. Then maybe he'll have an idea of what the fuck he can do. He could call Dis in now. He could. He could fuck his whole entire plan to save one little stoner dude who's worth nothing at all. He was going to get the stupid fuck a deal.

"Cobras," Joe chokes out. "Douchebags. Fuck. I need some weed." Joe coughs what may have started life as a laugh, but comes out a groaning sputter of pain.

Travis laughs and feels like he's choking on some tainted bud, some green sprinkled with shiny, deadly particles of glass masquerading as trichome crystals, for the sake of making a bit of green look higher quality. He can't breathe for a second, his throat feels cut up and useless. He's got to think straight.

This is the floor the Cobras' rooms are on. If they did this, they're still here, they can't help, they may come back and finish the job.

Travis curses his stupid fucking morality and reaches for his bag. Saporta may have expected something different, but Travis is not like him. He can't let Joe die to save himself. He _may_ have enough with just his recordings, he _might_ be able to swing this without Saporta's witness statements (he won't, he can't: he tells that little bit of his mind to shut the fuck up), he may be able to take Saporta down too. Travis realises just the devil he's sold his soul to, now.

He pulls out his gun, his service piece, and he can't find his fucking cell. "Where the fuck is it," he snaps to himself. He gropes one-handed around papers and wires and disassembled rifle pieces.

"Joe," he says. Joe's eyes are shut, but not lightly: he's still awake and they're screwed shut in a painful grimace. That is something. Pain means life. "Joe, look at me, I need you to hold your wound again. Press hard. I need both hands to get my phone, okay?"

Joe nods and curls into himself, there's a sluggish hiccough of blood between Travis lifting his hand off and Joe pressing his own already bloody one back down.

Travis picks the bag up and empties it on the ground before he remembers, shit. His phone's in his fucking pocket.

He doesn't hear footsteps, but when he turns back to Joe, he sees sneakers, skinny jeans, skinny legs, other bodies, and hopes to fuck this is … anyone but the Cobras, really –

– and it's Wentz and Stump, who've collected Hurley somewhere along the way. Wentz's expression is terrible, Stump's too, and Hurley's mild frown is terrifying.

Travis's hand's in his pocket and his other hand's on his gun. Joe's blood is dripping ticklish down his forearm. The knees of his jeans are wet with it.

"Pete," Joe says. "_Pete_."

Travis realises, in that second, exactly what this looks like.

Wentz's got a gun in hand before Travis can raise his arm, Stump's hand reaches out for Wentz's shoulder, but it's not quick enough, and the shots ring out loud and fast enough that even if Travis's open mouth was spitting more than blood, no one would have heard it anyway. His vision fades out before he hits the ground and he goes on falling. Icarus after all.

Travis ends here.

* * *

It is dark when they come. The van is white, its windows are black, tinted dark enough they mirror the outside world in streaky smudges as it moves, then as a netherworld of distorted shadows when it stops.

He catches his reflection in the dark windows of the van, from across the road, far enough away the only thing that really stands out is _white light_, ghostly white floating pale as snow in the darkness, moving slowly, and there is a moment of disconnect before he realises: that is him – that is his own white, white hair, cropped close and messy to his head. The image mirrored in the inky black connects with his sense of self when he presses his hand to his head. His scalp still burns and itches from his mother's hair dye.

Gerard Way, meet Gerard Way.

The van parks across the road from the hotel, quiet and inconspicuous. It bears a close enough resemblance to any old van, any of the vans parked in the underground of the hotel, that no one who happens to be watching will bat an eyelash. It rocks on its suspension as people move around inside, heavy, jerking. Gerard watches, casually from the corner of his eye.

No one will come after him. Not yet. As far as anyone knows, Gerard Way is still inside the hotel.

As far as he is concerned, the Gerard Way they are thinking of _is_.

He nods to his reflection, as he strolls past the hotel's facade, its front doors, and his ghostly hair nods back, his lips curl up in a smile he can't see. He doesn't laugh. Doesn't want to start in case he won't _stop_. Nerves? Shouldn't be. He is certain, right now (finally), of exactly what has to happen. His stomach still protests, his joints still feel a little weak, as if he's just woken up, as if he's hungover. Hungover from bleach fumes? Don't laugh (that stuff really burns). The hangover of a former life. Or newborn, with the joints of a tricky-legged impala, just born and ready to run on aching, brand new bones.

Rise Against Security. They are hired guns, not at all in the old-fashioned sense, nothing old world, no six-shooter toting; they're not honourable, roguish, personal. They are the hired guns of Gerard's own generation, they are the automatic weapons that people point at conflicts too big, or too secret, or far, far too dirty for anything human. Humane.

They owe the Ways a favour. They owe the Ways more money, Gerard thinks, than he will ever see again. This is not important, he repeats it to himself, _this is not important_. What he is buying with the erased debts, what he's buying with all his whole empire is worth more than what he's giving away.

The Ways are gone now, the family is dead, and these frogmen are here to pay their debt and cremate the remains of the bloated, poisonous waste they've left behind, standing tall in marble and brick and concrete and steal. The body, the building, and all its wounded but working organs, all the pieces that don't realise that brain has died yet, they are to be incinerated still writhing and pumping mindlessly.

Setting this in motion was Gerard Way's last act as Head of the Family.

This is Gerard Way's first act as a human being:

If he can just make sure that he keeps moving right now.

The driver's side window of the van is wound down, the man behind the steering wheel is wearing a uniform that from this distance might be anything at all, but it brings to mind a generic package company, a mailman, a courier. Something faceless, harmless and easily-dismissed.

The driver looks at him, and Gerard looks back, but he is blankly ignored. Professionally, or honestly, he can't tell – he thinks honestly (though he knows they have files upon files on him, as many as the Ways have on them – on anyone who owes them the sums of money they had borrowed to make themselves what they were, on anyone who had been provided the opportunities to better themselves).

But why should any of them recognize him, so casually outside the hotel, in the line of fire? That's his other clue that perhaps his appearance is changed enough, as much as he had hoped, that no one has taken a shot at him, no sniper, no wolf at the door has torn his throat out.

His puts his hand inside his coat pocket. His mother's gun is tucked against his chest, the carved handle pressing denting the skin over his heart. His real weapons, though, are holstered at his sides. Two guns: his own, his brother's. Both their holsters, too, stiff black leather, for his, and supple, well worn for Mikey's – he grits his teeth together and thinks of what spectacular funeral games he'll soon have, what fireworks – he needs not to think about Mikey, right now. No, he can't, but he just needs. Not to dwell.

He glances at the van again. Why should he be recognized?

He barely recognized himself a moment ago.

He is not wearing a suit.

He is not the man who made the call to these soldiers for hire.

Why should they recognize him?

Gerard rounds the corner into the alleyway. His heart is beating faster now, his thoughts are racing, but solid. Far more solid than his shaking limbs. Standing in the line of fire without anyone between him and whatever is out there is something he has never done. There has always been someone else's heart to take the bullet before his. This is terrifying, physically exhausting, but his mind is oddly calm.

It is also freeing.

He leans against the alleyway wall, presses his shoulders hard into the bricks and listens.

He hears police sirens, faint, car horns, the yowl of a trapped animal, the screaming of an engine speeding too fast across the far end of the alleyway, echo bouncing through they alley sharply. Then it's silent.

The world makes noise, but the hotel is quiet. Perhaps it realises its heart has been cut out and it is dying, silently praying to whatever god buildings as soaked in living blood as this one might make, some city-dwelling new god. Gerard's palms are cold, flat against the wall. The bricks are rough and probably dirty, but what he's focussing on most is the feeling as he presses his skull backwards into the hotel.

No hair tickles the back of his neck, not enough smooth black strands to blanket his skull and keep him warm. He hasn't had hair this short since he was thirteen, it's strange to push his vulnerable skull against the wall and just feel.

Behind him something crashes, a collision of metal on metal, loud and shocking.

He swallows a curse like unchewed food, choking and unexpected, and no way to spit it out without making even more noise, drawing attention he doesn't want. He slowly, slowly, hoping he isn't freezing when he should be running or shouting or, he doesn't know, he slowly looks around him, peeling himself off the wall, glancing one way and the next. Darkness.

There is a French curse – he translates it as "whore", or something similar, he remembers only fragments of the language from his school, and most of those are related to business and polite phrases of greeting – then he realises where he is standing. He is outside the hotel, so he is standing on top of ... he is on the west side of the building, so the parking lot … and he is in the alleyway behind the kitchen. He looks up and sees the small window, too high for anyone to reach and barred in ornate black iron; even in an alleyway the hotel maintains its image, his mother's gothic touch, as if the omnipresent black paint of her nails leaked over everything she laid her hands on.

He stands silently and listens. Listens. There is another irritated barrage of French – Spanish? He can't tell, it's too fast for him, too far away. Then a woman's voice – he thinks he recognizes it as the voice of the Cobras' woman: Vicky-T, she called herself. He remembers her mostly from bringing Brandon in, crawling and bleeding. She is vicious. Then he remembers what had happened to Brandon afterwards.

There are monsters and there are monsters.

Quinn.

He smacks his head back against the wall harder than he'd intended, but he needs to, the pain, at least, brings him out of his head (he can't afford to go back there, now, he has already wasted so much time), in time for him to catch the end of a sentence, " – teach those fuckers they need to pull the goddamn sticks out–" a laugh, a happy female laugh that sounds sweet and mad, then –

"Gaaaaaabe," and another laugh, more than one – the Cobras are doing something, there in the kitchens.

"Put it all in," that voice, so sure and smug, he knows, is Saporta. He wonders what they're doing, then remembers that it's none of _his_ concern and, now, it doesn't matter anyway. Their petty snipes and little grudges are the equivalent of people arguing with their backs turned to the tornado that's coming.

He leans his hand back, presses the crown of his head to the wall, as if staring at the glowing, wrought iron rectangle of the window will help him hear better, and hears nothing at all. He has no idea how much time passes, the wind howls through the alleyway, and does not ruffle his hair or blow strands into his mouth.

He waits. He waits until his fingers are cool against the bricks, presses them into his own forearms, then waits again until they are warm.

He doesn't know how long has passed – he feels like it's been an hour or more, which makes him think it's probably less than half of that, with nothing to stare at but the dumpster, nothing to think about but what's to come, running through his plan over and over again in his head.

He had been too far inside his own vengeful grief when he'd made the call to Rise Against, he had been stuck in the same selfish place he'd always been, where people took care of things for him and took care of him and he took care of no one (the evidence was overwhelming: his mother, his brother, his life).

He hadn't remembered Frank and Bob, hadn't remembered Ray, hadn't remembered that they were _inside_ until it was too late – until it was all in motion. Until he wasn't quite the same person, and their lives were no longer _his_ neglected responsibility.

So he is handing this one to something bigger than himself and letting it decide for all of them. He will walk head-on into it, hiding nothing and only asking. He's not sure it can be called a plan – it is something he has to do, and there's only one step, one objective, one thing he is going to do and everything else he is leaving in the hands of fate, or justice, or whoever the patron saint of repentant sinners is. His mother would have known.

He is not going to interfere, he is just going to wait. Then find his people.

He waits until he hears a van door creak open and squeak-slam, echoing loud in the alleyway. Boots pound the pavement audibly, fast, but not running. Rise Against are moving.

He still has time. His fingers twitch inside his coat arms, sweaty against the crooks of his elbows.

No one comes this way. His nameless patron saint has opened with a gift.

The sound of automatic rifle fire rips through the night like the sonic boom of a jet long gone, awe inspiringly loud.

_It's started._

There's a dull booming thud, and something crashes down inside, metal screams and concrete crunches, an avalanche and a signal. It is time for Gerard to move.

He walks in the front door.

* * *

It's weird, he thinks, how he's never felt so invincible in his life and he may just be closer to death than he's ever been. There is a desk, in the hotel's lobby, and it is empty and perfect, the entire front room untouched as if nothing is wrong at all, apart from the conspicuous absence of people. Gerard had left the door open for them.

There is nothing here that suggests anything is wrong except a thin plume of smoke creeping with grey fingers across the ceiling. Gerard follows it to where it's streaming out of the corridor beside the bank of elevators. There is meant to be a door there. There is not. There is no door on the naked hinges at all.

Gerard has a choice: there is the corridor, the stairs, the elevators. When Frank and Bob return to his room, they will probably assume he's still inside—he's been locked in there for days, a few hours more of silence shouldn't bother them. That's a starting point. Ray, on the other hand, could be anywhere. So Gerard heads upwards.

The most direct route would be the elevators, but he is setting himself in fate's hands and not _committing suicide_, so he doesn't take them. The door to the stairwell is closed.

He has to show them he's changed. He has to show them. This isn't a change like asking for less sugar in his coffee, this is a change like _death_ and the only thing that will bring it home is that. He has to show them.

He will see. But he can't leave them in good conscience and that is what he wants: a good conscience. If he dies trying to find them, _so be it_. He will die doing what he should, having lived his whole short, new life doing right. If saving them is not enough, he will live to do more.

If he can't save them, he will die and maybe that's enough, to really burn it all. Even his bones. Clean, either way. Pass through the fire or be eaten alive by it and come out clean walking or smouldering and skeletal.

Automatic gunfire punctuates his thoughts.

He follows the smoke, and moves through the broken open doorway, letting it swallow him up and breathe out another puff of smoke behind him.

Inside the corridor is like some medieval artist's dark ink drawing of a vision of hell. The first thing Gerard encounters are three bodies, grotesque figures shot running for their lives, their clawed fingers outstretches for the exit, their clothes strangely scorched, their heads cleanly, yet messily blown apart in smoke-choked splatters of skull flecked brain matter, jumbled over the corridor's close together walls.

What's left is halves of mouths and an eye, the isolated pieces of expressions that might make a picture of a shocking, painful death, wide eyed, open mouthed and wondering why. Gerard picks his way over the thick maze of limbs as neatly as if he's passed right through it like a spectre, without pause, other than the tick of his eyes downward to take it in.

Shocking.

Gerard never expected to be without his brother. It's been a shocking week for a lot of people (he thinks this quick and harsh and immediately regrets the thought – _he_ is not who this is for, this is not revenge, as petty and evil as what he's trying to leave behind, this is something that is saving more lives, in time, that it is taking, building more than it is ruining, he will rip the good from the cold bloody hands of this place, he will step over a hundred corpses to make sure).

His toes sink wetly into a shining patch on the dark carpet. He is not _shocked_ (he has, categorically and surely, witnessed worse, tortures and screaming. At least these bodies are silent), he is taking this in. He needs to see it all clearly.

He follows the gore that paints the walls upwards. There is a little blood on the ceiling. The guns Rise Against are using are probably meant for longer range fighting, or just meant to be very sure, very thorough.

Gerard knows these people end wars, or begin them; real wars in places far away from here, working for people whose short term goals are larger than most peoples', Gerard's own, entire life. This job is small game for them. There is, in that, a moment of self-awareness: he has seen people as obstacles in his life, they way they do, as objectives and pieces to be moved and set aside and disposed of, too.

He passes the door to the laundry, and there is more blood there. On the floor, pooled, smeared. There are piles of washing smouldering and smoke pours from the room, high and poisonous, chemicals and plastic and expensive linen burning. He realises he doesn't know their names, these dead faceless people that were his in some way. They would have known his. He tells himself to remember that.

It could be the smoke parching his throat, but he feels like he's walking inexorably towards the end of a journey through the desert (the devil of that desert, he thinks, has wild hair and blue eyes, and tempts with easy love and drugs. It sounds almost sweet. The laugh that he wants to cough out is bitter and burns his throat as badly as the smoke). Before, anyway, _right_ had been as scarce as water.

This feels right, though. This hurts: the sight of it. Even to breathe.

Gerard breathes, walks, keeps his eyes open.

The ground is smeared with blood like a fighter's towel. As if someone's dragged it over an open wound. Or, of course, he's got to think, here: as if someone has dragged themselves, wounded, across the scratching carpet.

He follows the trail like a yellow brick road further into hell.

The growing storm clouds seem to be seeping in from everywhere, rising up like the smouldering beginnings of a funeral pyre. It's the kind of smoke that has the potential to slowly choke him, that is damaging him as he breathes. He is not afraid of choking, though, he doesn't feel like that's how he'll end, so passive when he's discovered a purpose.

He instinctively ducks under the clouds, standing full height would be suicide, and nearly trips over another body. Long and dark, Travis McCoy is laid nearly wall to wall in the thin corridor, his long fingered, tattooed hands curled up purposefully around empty air, he is still, his chest soaked in blood.

Shots ring out, painfully close. Gerard jolts, then drops, unthinking as if he's been hit, to the ground with a hand in his coat, his other hand going uncontrollably to try and cover both his ears at once.

He peers over the side of McCoy's body, he can see the end of the hallway where it meets the next in a t-junction. Gunfire comes close, closer; he presses his chest into the stiff dirty carpet and squints his burning eyes, explosions, fireworks and strobe lights. The ones Gerard remembers staring and staring and laughing at, dancing and shaking and flying are nothing like these, not so loud, not so white-yellow. Strobe light automatic fire and ... and then, cloaked in body armour, masks, balaclavas, they pass. They do not have faces.

They are like monsters moving through the hellish darkness, grey and red, dark, swift, efficient killers; they are lit by a red glow of fire somewhere nearby, not close enough yet to feel.

Gerard still sweats. They are ghoulish, two legged sharks, with stalk-like eyes. Creatures from the black lagoon – freakish. Odd. Nightmarish (Gerard has always dreamed of monsters, comic book evils and grotesque freakshow things, never as grounded and fearsome as these).

He presses himself down next to the cold skin of Travis McCoy and watches them pass, booted feet swift and sure, their guns raised and ready.

The blood on McCoy's shirt is dry, Gerard realises, and his skin is very cold. He was already dead when they came.

He waits until he can no longer hear feet.

Had Bert told him the truth about him being a cop? It doesn't matter. It _doesn't_. Dead cop, now. Just another dead body, just another person laid low here.

He hears a yell and rapid gunfire again, but it's far enough away.

He does not want to run into them in the halls. Or, he doesn't want them to run into him.

He stands and feels slightly dizzy, getting up too fast or swallowing too much smoke. Everything is dark and grey and backlit with red and green, the emergency exit signs, he now realises, the first exit signs, red and green glowing, like the phosphorescing of deep water fish, luring Gerard in the wrong direction. He knows where he is going. He will not be hypnotized (not again; he shies away from the thought of doll-blue eyes).

He turns the corner, follows the path the gunmen have already tread, heavy boot scuffs and scorch marks. This corridor turns from the working rooms in the hotel, the laundry and the kitchen, and connects to the ground floor suites. Gerard pulls his fingers along the wall behind him and it feels warm, a fire on the other side? Smooth and warm until the Cobras' rooms are within sight, then his fingers dip into a rough, sharp-edged chip out of the plaster and he stops. He expects to find more death, and as he pushes the half open door and lets it swing, death is what he gets, but not exactly as he'd expected it:

Inside the doorway, there is a an armoured man, one of Rise Against's, dead and still on the floor—the helmet he wears has left an impression in the wall just inside the room, a round crater in the plaster, as if he'd been hit hard enough, desperately enough, that he's careened into the wall, hit by someone who had nothing to defend themselves with but speed against his finger on the trigger.

There are bulletholes in the ceiling. The body has no particular face, Gerard sees his eyewear smashed half across the room. There has been an explosion of some kind in the room and it is still smouldering. He squats and pushes at the shoulder of the man until he slumps onto his back limply, then he stands quickly, blinks long and slow, his eyes tearing up, smoke stung. He looks down at the body again.

His face, the only unprotected part of his skull, has been caved in (too much mouth, now, like a spoiled fat child eating red jelly). The thick black body armour and dark, heavy weaponry don't make him seem otherworldly, now. They make him look small. Just another body for the pyre.

The Cobras are gone.

He leaves the door open, the body behind.

At the next door Gerard is captured by his own reflection, he stops, jerkily: this is him. He touches his white hair and watches his reflection do the same. Light. He is different.

Somewhere on the floors above him, gunfire echoes in a stuttering beat, a drum roll beating steadily, his queue to enter.

Gerard pulls a gun from its holster and cautiously pushes the door open. It's the stairwell.

* * *

The stairwells are concrete and untouched by the ubiquitous black of the rest of the hotel. They shoot, two of them, up like empty veins, like the pulse either side of a neck, silently through the building, one on each side.

This isn't a place that's meant to be seen by anyone who cares about the presentable side of things, these stairs aren't for proper guests. That is what the hall-of-mirrors lifts are, haunting and pretty and a little scary—these stairwells resemble the underground, more. Practical, mostly, but still with his mother's aesthetic bled all over them, so they are not quite as standard as they seem.

The stairs are set in a loose twist, with curved landings, not so extreme as the insides of a Medieval tower, just a little twist that makes it harder to see ahead as you walk. Gerard had expected this, but it still feels like walking through a funhouse, waiting for the vampire to pop out and hiss at him, just in front where he can't quite see yet.

He holds his gun in his right hand and walks steadily, inexorably, upwards, and does not peer around corners, cannot peer around the subtle bends, but he is less worried by this than he thinks, perhaps, is normal. He climbs. Past the Fall Out boys' floor, past the dead doctors' rooms, past floor after floor that _could_ be full of carnage, _is_ full of memories from his whole dead life.

He doesn't stop, ignores the cracks under the doors where he can imagine quite clearly blood seeping, and burning – he's breathing heavily, as he climbs, and he coughs as he sucks in a breath of particularly dirty air.

The hotel is surprisingly silent—more empty than he'd expected: had they all run, had Rise Against been so efficient? Poison, bullets, fire? It sounds hollow, like a corpse that's been almost picked clean, so clean only the skeleton remains and the most tenacious bugs, and most of those are dead, too.

The smoke seeping into the stairwell like a chimney is acrid, but thin, with all the doors shut tight against it, it comes slowly and rises fast. The air is almost misty, with it, making the fluorescent light flicker strangely.

It's warmer, as he climbs. Fire, the summery warmth of the night as the hotel shuts down slowly, broken and bruises and banged apart (the stairs shake and there's a dull thud as if a giant has kicked the foundation of the building in a rage). No breeze enters the stairwell. Gerard feels his face drip sweat.

He hears the metal clank and creak of a door somewhere above him – _are they coming down_, he wonders, but continues at this steady pace without stumbling. There was never any going back, but the heavy sound of boots, two, maybe three sets, march away from him and he hears the faint creaking of another door before he has the chance to even see their backs.

He picks up his pace, he hasn't come here to simply say goodbye to the dead, he wants his people, he's come here to _save them_.

And now, the last landing (almost the last, there is a ladder above that leads to one of the roof access points, the trap door's lock lays broken at his feet; he glances at it, as he stands and catches his breath. He wonders if the lock was smashed by a rifle butt or jimmied off earlier. The fire escapes outside the building are how the roof was _supposed_ to be accessed by patrols conducted by anyone other than those with keys, Frank, Bob. Mikey).

He wonders if Frank and Bob will be where he left them: guarding him where he is supposed to be, inside his room and inside his own head.

He pushes the door open and finds himself six feet from a back made broad and forbidding by body armour, thick and black. Another, foot forward braced, huge assault rifle planted solidly on his hip. As fast as silence will allow, as slow as adrenaline will let him, Gerard pops the clip on his second holster. He glances past the figures, over the shoulder of the one directly in front of him, and sees what he had hoped:

Frank and Bob, alive, very much alive. Back to back and bare fists to bullets.

As if they would be able to do anything against the guns facing them but die defiantly, torn apart _together_. Gerard reminds himself that he should be over any jealous fascination with death – he is no longer a teenager – dying, though, has been on his mind recently, and the thought of having maybe died with Mikey, physically, with more haste and more blood. It is too late for stupid thoughts and it is too soon for Frank and Bob.

Frank's face, apart from how it is half-swollen, a mess of bloody bruising, is intense. Frank's left hand hangs like it's painful, but Bob stands at that side like a shield. Bob's face is a blank fury, Frank's has that crazy twist to the functioning side of his mouth, the glazed eyes that spell _fight_.

Frank's collar is stained with dried blood from whatever (whoever) has happened to his face, Bob's hands are curled into fists. Frank is crazy enough, Bob is angry enough. They look scary. In a hotel full of monsters, Gerard thinks the trick is to recognize which ones are _his_.

Frank and Bob (and Ray), they are family – no. No, they're friends. _His friends._ He has no _family_ now.

There is a second, a literal second, where Bob catches his eyes, then Frank a moment behind him, and the look they give him, mirroring each other perfectly, dark and light and both of them shocked and confused, he wonders, if his reflection even startles himself, how he must seem to them, suddenly appearing here, at this moment. An apparition? A ghost?

Ghosts can't use guns, though, and Gerard presses his finger _shhh_ to his lips and his other index finger to the trigger of his gun, there is armour and armour and the only thing he sees that is _human_ from behind it a wisp of dark hair at the back of the neck closest to him: so that is where he shoots.

The first soldier drops like a stone, like a marionette whose strings have been severed, and Gerard wonders, in the beat before the blood comes, if at such close range his bullet has cleanly severed his spine. A fast, good death, and the burst of blood from his neck is violent, but Gerard is sure he is dead before he sees it.

He twists, on the way down, and Bob's hand, Frank's feet, catch the falling stream.

The second soldier is not so lucky. He whips his head around as Gerard is turning his attention to him and Gerard's shot, instead of taking him quietly and easily as the first, wings him with a bang and a scream in the unprotected side of his knee, it catches enough to blow his kneecap out, white and red bursting through the tear in his trousers.

He goes down screaming and it's a perverse game of stacks on as Frank and Bob rush ahead of Gerard and throw themselves over him, fists and hands, wrestling the rifle from his grip before he can squeeze the heavy trigger.

Frank slides off, rolling and taking the rifle with him, shoving it far away towards the wall. Bob's elbow hits the guy's face hard enough he goes limp, knocked out. Gerard stands, points his gun, but catches Bob's eyes for a second (Bob's face is red, and there is blood on it that Gerard does not think is his), and Gerard unshackles his finger from the trigger.

He watches Bob's forearm shift around the throat, he watches the helmet flung across the room and hears the sharp snap, smells the blood that's unrelated but appropriate perfume for this, as a twist of Bob's hands, a bunch of the muscles in his shoulder, snaps the unconscious man's neck.

"Who are they?" Frank asks first, shoving a wet lock of hair out of his eyes, bouncing to his feet with his usual tenacity, favouring his injured hand but still springing up fast.

Gerard shrugs. "Professionals."

Frank nods, gives Gerard a swift, _painful_ hug that's way too hard and way too high impact. Gerard hugs back and his ribs ache, and his heart aches too. He is glad they're alive.

"We were dead," Bob says, his voice the verbalization of Frank's grateful head-butts to Gerard's shoulder. Gerard says nothing, just hugs Frank back for one second and meets Bob's eye. There's a promise, there, too.

Frank untangles them abruptly, then plasters himself to Bob's side. Bob's fingers find their way to Frank's and they slip together, unconscious and grounding each other like they do. There are no more questions – Gerard had anticipated this, Ray's questions are the ones he has real, prepared answers for, at least as far as implying that Rise Against (Ray would find out who they were, Ray was Ray and as long as he was breathing he would Know Things about Shit) had decided that their debt was unpayable and switched sides in an effort to erase it in one easy step.

"Ray?" Gerard asks, not hopeful, but not wanting to ask in a way that's too full of jinx.

Frank and Bob frown and Gerard's heart drops from the little way it's risen since he's found them.

"In here," and Gerard for the first time takes in the strangely wide open doors of the penthouse and walks through: the smell hits him, like someone has killed sewer rats and smoked them with burning plastic.

It's an accumulation of the smoke that's rising everywhere and the state of the place and the fact that this _smell_ – it's even less pleasant than he remembers and it's bringing back an awfully clear echo of the despair he's felt, soaked in this place and falling apart like a zombie. He shudders. He cannot wait to go.

Until it's all gone, until the fire climbs up here and pulls this all down.

Frank and Bob stop, flanking him on either side comfortably in their typical, crowded rooms positions, falling into them naturally, one either side: Ray, he realises, is right here, right in front of him, and Ray's questions, he realises, are not going to be a problem.

Ray is curled in on himself, a ball of loose-sprung hair and a shockingly dishevelled suit. He has no tie. Gerard has seen Ray, perhaps the drunkest he has ever been, louder than normal, chatting and yelling and happy, so drunk he had almost let Gerard invite Brian for dinner with them – and he has never seen Ray do any more, in public, than loosen the knot on his tie a little.

He has no tie.

"Ray," Gerard says.

Ray reaches out towards him and Gerard thinks, okay, okay, where is he hurt, he's got to stand, or we can carry him, but the second Gerard takes a step forward, reaching for Ray's hand, Ray snatches his hand back and his too wide and too white.

He looks like a spooked horse, spit-flecked chin and wild, rolling eyes. Gerard wonders if he'd seen him at all: or what he had seen, what he was seeing Gerard as, here. Another monster with a gun?

"Did you see?" Ray asks, his voice steady and almost normal, his body trembling and confused.

"What happened?" Gerard asks, without turning around. "Ray?" he tries and feels his heart constrict and hopes painfully that Ray comes back to himself. The sight of him, mumbling lips and slow blinking eyes and hands grasping at the empty air is worse than any body Gerard has stepped over tonight.

"He was eating something, he came up to bring you something too, which was when we finally realised you weren't _here_," Frank's voice is an exercise in failure of restraint, he tries for his talking-to-the-boss voice that's shaky at the best of times with Gerard, and falls somewhere around plaintive, abandoned, confused, angry.

Gerard will correct him, later, and tell him that he never wants to hear that failed restraint in Frank's voice again, to speak to Gerard the same way he would speak to anyone, to Bob, to any man on the street, but never to speak to him like he is the dead Gerard Way.

"We searched, but then the fireworks started, but, but by the time we heard the guns Ray was _out_ of it and we couldn't get him to move –"

"And I wasn't leaving him," Bob adds. Gerard wonders which him he means, and also wonders briefly at the idea that Bob would think Gerard would ever assume otherwise. Gerard knows him.

"Ray," Gerard tries again, a little more forceful this time.

Ray laughs and isn't looking at him at all.

"We could carry him, now, two with Ray, someone on point until we get out," Frank suggests.

"Ray," Gerard says again, gently.

Ray's face is a mish-mash of expressions and his hands conduct some symphony Gerard cannot see, until abruptly, it ends and Ray's elegant, manicured fingers curl madly into his hair and when they come away it's with shiny strands around his fingertips.

The lights in the room flicker gently, then finally, they go out. It is suddenly only as light as the open windows allow. The moonlight on Ray's confused face makes Gerard think of werewolves. The spit on Ray's lips, the blood on his fingertip where he's bitten a nail past the quick.

"_Ray_."

"We gotta go, Gee," Bob says. Unease creeping into his voice.

"Take my hand," Gerard tries. Ray looks at him.

He is wide eyed and still skittish, still shaky, but he looks like maybe he _sees_ Gerard, or like whatever he's seeing instead is good, _amazing_.

Something crashes down below them. They have to go, or risk burning here. Gerard puts his hand, palm up, right in front of Ray's face: a gesture of surrender, a plea.

"Take my fucking hand."

Ray's fingers meet his and Gerard clasps them tight in his own.


End file.
